Away to Neverland
by Chibi-Reaper
Summary: The greatest love story ever told continues, as Ranma and Suika head off for the fairy-tale land of Gensokyo.
1. Chapter 1

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear Mother, _

_To begin, I must apologize. In my previous letter, I deliberately left hints suggesting that I was currently passing through Osaka. This was not the case, however I felt it neccessary, as upon due consideration I realized that no matter how much I trusted you to keep private correspondence private, I could not in all honesty believe that more than a day would pass before the entire district would nevertheless be aware that I had made contact with you. Such is the unfortunate reality of Nerima, and I have no doubt that a number of people have already left the area, and shall be most surprised indeed when they finish hunting for me in Osaka and return to find that I was never there._

_In any case, Herb generously treated us to dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant before leaving Japan to return to his homeland. The meal was excellent, albeit served in distressingly small portions, and I have no doubt that I am far happier unaware of what the bill amounted to. As I have mentioned before, he is currently seeking a bride, and although I could not personally help him in that matter, I have suggested that he contact you, and would ask that you assist him in finding a young woman, who would not object to becoming the queen of a secret, foreign country, and with an appropriately open mind, as he bears a curse identical in many respects to my own. Having gotten to know her relatively well, I would suggest Nabiki as suitable for the role, except that I cannot say with certainty whether or not she would find the ancient draconic treasuries and stockpiles of gold and precious gemstones, as well as other assorted hoarded valuables, to be adequate recompense for removing herself from the modern amenities to which she is accustomed. Perhaps it would be better to make inquiries within her social circle for appropriate brides._

_With regards to money, Suika and I have reached a compromise. So long as I do not bring up the idea of selling away her sake, Suika has offered instead to make use of her control over hellfires and density to manufacture diamonds from raw coal. This has so far served to increase my ready funds to many times over what was my previous maximum, by far more than what is necessary to outfit myself in cooking supplies and keep us in emergency provisions. Enclosed within the package are a sample diamond and a small bottle of Suika's sake, with her compliments. She refers to them, with much amusement, as the 'bride price', paid to my 'previous owner'. I find myself rather less enthused, though I cannot deny the point. Also enclosed within are assorted photographs, as it has been suggested you may appreciate them._

_With love, your son,_

_Ranma_

"Waaaaaay too formal." Suika declared, reading the letter over Ranma's shoulder as he signed it. "Seriously, you don't talk like that at _all_."

"There's a difference between talking with someone and writing them a letter, you know." Ranma said, sealing the folded letter into an envelope and tying it to a package with a length of twine. "You aren't supposed to write the way you talk."

"You _sure_ about that?" Suika asked dubiously.

Ranma shrugged as he folded up the paper and placed it into an addressed envelope, which he'd taped to a box. Without further note, he dropped the box into a mail-deposit.

"Anyway, I'm kind of hungry." He said, changing the subject. "Anything in particular that you want to eat?"

"Mm..." Suika mumbled noncommitally, glancing around the crowd of urbanity flowing around them who, for their part, were going well out of their way to give the horned girl a wide berth while at the same time doing their best to pretend that she didn't actually exist. "That salaryman looks-"

"Let's leave Soylent Green off the dinner plans for now, alright?" Ranma interrupted, noting how the man she'd pointed out was now walking _just_ that little bit faster.

"Soy... what?" Suika wondered aloud.

"It's... it's a reference, sort of thing..." Ranma said, wilting at the failure of his attempt to sound clever. "From a movie I watched. It turns out that it's made of people."

"Oh. Movie...?"

"You know what, let's just forget this whole thing ever happened. Trying again, is there anything you particularly want to eat _not_ including people?"

"... I wouldn't mind another bear. Or an elk." Suika said, vaguely.

"Aaaand yeah. I'll just pick up a couple dozen MkCheezy Burger's then." Ranma decided. "Hunting will have to wait a little bit, but that should tide you over."

"... Okay?" Suika agreed, still slightly confused.

Not particularly long after, they had retired to a secluded back-alley, and she found herself staring down at a partially wrapped burger with one bite taken out of it, chewing contemplatively.

"It's... it's something." She said. "The brown patty tastes almost like meat, but it isn't... I'm not sure what the yellow stuff is, but it's not cheese... there's so many weird, chemical flavors and aftertastes through the whole thing... it's kind of disgusting, and it feels like every bite is poison..."

She hesitated, then took another big bite and chewed carefully.

"But... I just can't stop eating it." She said, in a confused sort of abstract horror.

"That's fast food for you." Ranma said, through a mouthful of his sixth burger, the rest carefully stowed in his not-pockets. "Odds are good you're happier not knowing what goes in it, and too much will probably kill you in the long run, but it's cheap and... theoretically, food."

"... That was probably the most horrible thing I've eaten in my life." Suika concluded, staring at the empty wrapper in her hands before disintegrating it with a puff of hellfire. "Why do I want more?"

"Never did figure that one out." Ranma admitted, tossing another burger her way. "But I think-"

"Paranormal activity located." A dull monotone echoed through the alley, coming from a nondescript man in a black suit and shades. There was a sharp flicker and, as Ranma squinted, he could barely make out light images and illegible words scrolling past one of the lenses, and an outline of his figure. It went blank as he turned his head slightly to look at Suika, and the words and images began scrolling past again, building rapidly as the image of her began to flash red.

"Paranormal subject located. Potential threat index: Moderate. Initiating subdual and retrieval protocols."

"Yeah, this is new." Ranma remarked, absently taking a bite of his current burger as the suit pulled a funny gun that gave off sparks every few seconds.

"Citizen, please stand aside." it said.

"Mm, no." Ranma replied, polishing off the burger and tossing the wrapper aside. "Dunno what kind of beef you have with Suika, but I'm not making any decisions about what to do until you start talking about it."

"... Affirmative." It stated, after a long moment of processing, during which numbers and words had flashed across its sunglasses too fast to comprehend. "Per standing orders, this unit is to locate and quarantine all paranormal activity within its area of operation. Following this, this unit is to follow the dual standard directive: A) To subdue any paranormal subjects, contain them, and escort them to the laboratories for proper study and research, or B) If subject proves hostile, to immediately terminate it."

"Well, isn't that nice." Ranma said dryly. "Except... when you say 'study and research', for some reason, what I hear sounds an awful lot like 'imprisonment and interrogation'. Could be I'm just paranoid, of course...?"

Ranma trailed off expectantly. Rather than any verbal answer, however, the suit's hand-cannon-thing gave off a sound uncomfortably similar to that of a cocking shotgun.

"Citizen, you will stand aside now. If you do not comply, this unit is authorized to bring escalating force to bear for the removal of unruly civilians."

"I'm shaking in my brand new pants." Ranma dryly replied. "Yo, Suika? Not that you need my help, but you have any objections to me beating the tar out of mister cheap suit?"

"Eh, knock yourself out." The oni said disinterestedly, currently involved in a fierce staring contenst with her half-eaten burger.

"Will do!"

"Civilian belligerence acknowledged. Threat index: nonexistent. Setting to stun, mild."

Without a further word, the suit fired off a blast from his gun. The ball of energy that resulted moved almost insultingly slowly, and Ranma calmly slapped it out of its path to fizzle away harmlessly against a brick wall with nothing more than a slight tingle in his fingers. The suit's sunglasses went absolutely crazy, and it remained still for almost a full fifteen seconds as it seemed to process the turn of events, by which time Ranma was thoroughly bored with the situation and had begun to consider just ignoring it and leaving.

"Threat index revised: Minor." The suit said aloud, as the sunglasses faded again to black. "Scan complete. No notable paranormal activity present in subject. Request data update... acknowledged. Citizen, you will stand down and face interrogation."

"Yeah, that'll happen. You know, why don't you just take off and let us eat in peace, huh?"

The suit's answer was to raise its gun again, and was interrupted by Ranma closing the distance between them and delivering a palm thrust to the chin, sending him into a backwards flip and rough landing. Ranma winced at the audible crunch as his opponent crumpled into a painful looking heap.

"Oh... oh shit..." Ranma moaned rubbing at his forehead as he turned away. "I forgot... normal people can't take hits. That's just great..."

He paused as there was another crunch, followed by another. Disbelieving, he turned back, to where the figure was slowly rising, sparking and clearly robotic innards now visibly poking through the suit and false skin it was wearing.

"... Threat index revised: Significant." It droned in that same monotone.

"You gotta be _kidding_."

"Citizen, be advised. Reinforcements are currently en route. Threat index baseline has been crossed. Any and all hostile actions will now be met with lethal countermeasures. This is your final opportunity to surrender peacefully."

"Yeah... that'll happen." Ranma grumbled. "Suika, now would be a good time for us to get-"

"We'll come quietly. Please, escort us to your superior."

"What." Ranma said dully, muscles he'd been tensing in preparation for a quick getaway going slack.

"I'm a little curious about who wants to meet me so badly." She said, tossing aside an empty wrapper and holding out her hand expectantly.

Ranma groaned, but obediently forked over another burger. The action of pulling it out of nowhere did not go unnoticed by the suit's sunglasses, which once more went haywire.

"This is a bad, bad idea." He noted darkly, as two more suits appeared.

xxx

The Institute for the Advancement of Humanity was the name of the place. A large, squat brick building near the outer limits of town. By the name, you would guess that it housed a center for the appreciation of arts, or a charity of some sort. Not the case.

The person in charge, a doctor of some sort, had introduced himself as 'Smith'. No other name given, no names requested, no apologies for the obvious psuedonym he was using. Instead, just straight into the questioning.

"... And how, exactly, did you come across your... abilities?" Smith repeated, having swung back to this question, in one form or another, throughout the entire conversation.

"Like I _said_." Ranma said sharply. "Everything you've seen me do is the result of focused martial arts training."

"I'm sure. And in the course of this training... you've never, I suppose, been exposed to any sort of radioactivity? No... unusual chemical spills, or any such thing? Never, I suppose, have you encountered extraterrestrial activity, or sold yourself to fiendish, dark horrors for power?"

"_No_." Ranma snapped irritably.

"I see. Then... how, exactly, do you claim to have reached such superhuman ability?"

"_Training_."

Smith did not seem in any way convinced, and at this point Ranma was pretty sure that nothing he could say was going to convince the man.

"Hmm... you're being quite difficult. You understand that such blatant lies-"

"I'm not lying!" Ranma barked.

"Such _blatant_ lies will fool no-one. There is quite simply a hard, scientifically determined limit to how powerful a human can grow through even the most rigorous and brutal of training. A... peak, as it were, to what humanity can naturally achieve. You, my friend, are well past that limit. Now... since you refuse to speak about the source of your unnatural powers, perhaps we should instead focus on-"

Ranma brought one fist down on the table between them, silencing the scientist, who automatically flinched backwards somewhat as the robo-toughs shifted and set hands closer to their weapons.

"... 'Rigorous, brutal training'? What, running on treadmills while people take notes? Is that what you're talking about? I don't know... maybe I should tell you a little about my training?"

Smith's eyes gleamed.

"Then, at last you reveal the secret to-"

"When I was little, barely learned how to stand on my own, my father began my training in the family martial art." Ranma interrupted. "It began with properly learning how to fall."

"Yes, many schools of-"

"How to fall from any height, properly." Ranma continued, as though Smith had not spoken at all. "Rather than take things slowly, he showed his typical attitude of combined impatience and blind faith in my abilities and started off by throwing me off the roof of our family home."

Smith's mouth worked for a moment, but no sound emerged.

"It's hard to say, really, whether me living through the first year or two of training is more because of my own natural ability or just plain dumb luck. But yeah, it started off brutal, and only got worse. So tell me... any of your 'scientific peak of humanity' ever learned how to fight in water by being chained to a weight while their pops dumped buckets of pig blood over the sides of the boat to draw sharks? Any of them learned how to lose trackers by having raw steaks strapped to them and running away from packs of starving wild dogs? Huh?"

Smith gaped wordlessly, struck dumb by the outright ridiculously suicidal nature of the training.

"Yeah, that's what I _thought_. That peak of yours is only a limitation for the uncommitted. If you're willing to give your life for the sake of the art... it's _nothing_."

Smith polished his glasses furiously before replacing them.

"I see." He said, heavy cynicism and doubt coloring his words.

"You know, I don't even _care_ if you believe me or not anymore, but I take my art _very_ seriously. Don't expect me to just go back and say 'Oh, yeah, aliens did it' when you don't believe the truth."

"Then it _was_ extraterrestrial in origin..."

"That's _not what I said_... ugh. You're just going to twist around whatever I say until it's what you want to hear."

"Perhaps it would be better if we continued this discussion at a later date." Smith decided. "Escort him to the residential area."

Ranma grunted in disgust, but allowed the robots to lead him about with a minimum of gun-prodding. He wasn't particularly excited about the area they led him to either... a cluster of rooms which opened up to one larger room with a tv, which had the only door out from the area, which was locked and guarded on the outside by a pair of the robo-toughs. One of the smaller rooms was a bathroom, and the rest contained beds.

"So... what are you in for?" The only other resident of the area asked dully, from where he was sprawled on a couch.

"... You make it sound like we're in prison." Ranma noted.

"_Aren't_ we? Hah... Kenshiro. I'm here because I'm a telekinetic. When I focus really hard, I can make things move. That's why I'm here. How 'bout you, newbie?"

"... Ranma Saotome. I'm a martial artist."

"Oh. With the punchy, kicky sort of stuff, huh? I guess it's not much help against guns, though."

Ranma just grunted, and frowned.

"Suika isn't here."

"Sounds like a girl's name to me... afraid they didn't bring in any girls. She get taken in with you?"

"Yeah." Ranma said. "Sure you haven't seen her? She's... short. Looks young... horns..."

Kenshiro broke into a startled burst of dark laughter.

"Oh? No... no, I haven't seen anyone like that. But I know where she is. Heh. At this point, you should resign yourself... you'll never be seeing her again."

"Aaaand that right there did it. I've had enough of this. I'm going to go find Suika, and we are _gone_."

"You're _serious_?" Kenshiro barked, bursting into another surprised round of laughter. "You're really serious? Oh man... you just don't get it. If we were allowed to _leave_ do you think I'd still be here? They're guarding the door. Even if you somehow got past them, the entire area is under constant surveillance. You wouldn't make it ten feet."

"You let me worry about that. Just tell me... where's Suika?"

There was a long staredown before Kenshiro shrugged.

"Your life, I suppose. Anyway, up here is where they keep the ones that fit two criteria. Relatively cooperative, and unmistakeably human. The rest... go downstairs."

"That's it? Huh. Downstairs it is."

"You're throwing away your life, you know." Kenshiro noted. "Try to escape, and they stop playing nice. Yeah, you'll be going downstairs... if they don't just kill you right off. You can count me out... I like still being alive."

Kenshiro rose as Ranma snorted, and walked to one of the rooms, closing the door behind himself and locking it with an audible click.

Without another word, Ranma kicked down the door out, and immediately stepped through, catching hold of the robot's heads and smashing them together in a rain of sparks and ruined machinery. No need to hold back against robots.

Sure enough, within moments the lights turned to red and an alarm began wailing. No time for that, he needed to find the stairs... stairs... there. That door was labeled with stairs. That way.

He took the stairs quickly, but they went down further than just one floor. Much further. He stopped counting at six levels and just moved. At the bottom, there was a locked door. He kicked it open, and behind was a dimly lit railway of some sort.

"You've gotta be kidding me..." He grumbled, noting there was no car or trolley to ride in, and guessing correctly that it was at the other end of the tunnel. He ran.

No point thinking about how long the tunnel had run either, although it was a significant, _ridiculous_ length. When he finally reached the end, it had evened out and brightened up, everything seemed to be tiled and off-white instead of brick, and there was a small subway train at the end. Also, another locked door, which he wasted no time in kicking down.

The hallways beyond were very... sterile. Clean, shiny even, he could see his reflection in most things in spite of the dimmed light, and odd smells hung in the air. It gave the sense of... almost of a science classroom.

No, he realized, even as one of the scents came clear, sharp and recognizable as blood. Not a classroom... a laboratory.

He slowly fumbled the lightswitch on and stared through the glassy openings into the enclosed cells as he walked through. Sometimes, mercifully, there were no real details of what had gone on inside, only a figure laying on a medical table, partially or entirely covered by a sheet. Sometimes, he was not so fortunate, and he was treated to the sight of exposed organs or hollowed out ribcages in all their glory. One window he passed held some sort of experiment in progress, of a horrible machine tearing into what would have passed for a stately middle aged-woman were it not for all the fur. He was sure that, for just a moment, her gaze met his and it was _full_ of agonized pleading, before the machine _wrenched_ and she went entirely limp.

He stumbled away from the window, clutching at his mouth as the bile rose.

"It's _about_ time." Suika remarked from the cell behind him. "So far, this has been a _lot_ less interesting than I'd hoped. And I'm hungry again."

He managed to turn to look, and was relieved to see that Suika's cell was full of pulped scrapmetal, where she had clearly compressed the density of the robots that had been intended for her.

"Anyway, time to go." She said, dispersing into mist and pooling through near-imperceptible cracks around the door before reforming.

"Wait..." Ranma croaked. "There could still be...some might still be alive!"

Suika shrugged disinterestedly, and Ranma rewarded her with a very stern look and frown.

"Geez, alright, fine. Go rescue the experiments if you have to... this is why we kidnap the princesses and fair damsels and not the hero-types." She grumbled to herself. "Burger first, though."

Ranma absently handed one over as he made his way deeper into the chambers of scientific horror, slowly coming to regret his decision to not leave immediately. The doors were all locked, but it only ever took a good kick to smash them down.

Many of the occupants were dead. Many of those dead were in some stage of dismemberment or decay, and some few of them had, horribly enough, been completely taken apart and neatly labeled. One room contained a particularly ghastly specimen that had been partially put back together afterwords, for what purpose he couldn't even begin to fathom. He at first couldn't decide which were more horrible, the corpses that were closer or further from human, and forced himself not to think about it.

He rapidly discovered that these dead may well have proven to be the better off of those Smith had ordered taken downstairs. Those rooms that still had living occupants were far, far worse.

There was a huge... almost-dog sort of creature in one. Its legs had been broken and left unset, nailed into place with spikes to prevent it from any sort of movement. It growled, snarled and snapped at him whenever he came close... understandable, as whatever it was, it was heavily pregnant and acting on instinct. Trying to keep him away from the casually carved holes and pinned back flesh and skin revealing the young growing within it. It would be dangerous even for him to approach, moreso if he freed it. And yet, it would also be pointless, as it wouldn't get far on ruined legs. He retreated from the room, not sure what to do.

One room held what at first glance might be mistaken for a butterfly collection, but on closer inspection Ranma realized that those were what looked like tiny _people_ between the wings, and that every one of them was still alive, despite the pins holding them in place. Random handfuls of pins, pressed almost randomly through the people-bits, through arms and legs and... he had to shake off a brief surge of nausea as his overactive imagination provided thoughts of what it must be like, to be painfully impaled on a board, held behind glass for the gawking of giant onlookers.

Another room provided an even more vivid example than that his own imagination brought to bear. A rail-thin man, bolted into place on an iron framework, large screws holding him painfully in place, crusted with blood, and to top it all off a featureless steel mask bolted into his very skull. An uncountable number of tubes ran from the machines surrounding him into his body, pumping fluids in and out, likely the only thing responsible for his continued existence.

"Kill... me..." He rasped from behind the mask once he became aware of Ranma's presence, and he would say nothing else.

While Ranma was trapped in his moral dilemma, Suika, who had been following him around the whole time out of boredom, simply shrugged and with the merest extension of her will, a micro-black-hole popped into momentary existence inside his chest.

"What? _What_? Seriously, he _literally_ asked for it!" She said, as Ranma sighed in distaste.

"That's not the point..." Ranma argued half-heartedly.

"Yes, yes, you humans and your angsty moral and philosophical issues. Bleh."

Ranma sighed again and opened another room, wincing as the blinded quadruple amputee within was revealed, albeit thoroughly wrapped in bandages to the point that not even a hint of skin showed..

"Hiya, stumpy." Suika nonchalantly chirped. "See anything interesting today, or... oh, wait, my bad."

"Just so you know, I don't actually approve of mocking tormented prisoners." Ranma grumbled.

"You don't have to! I'm the one doing it."

There was a soft hiss of... possibly amusement, possibly disgust. Amused disgust?... from the wrapped and stationary figure.

"Yo! Something funny, stumpy?"

"Not at all, mistress." She said raspily, suddenly completely sober.

"That's good. So, what are you gonna do? Been through the whole place, and there's nothing you can realistically save. Well, maybe the fairies, but depending on how long it's been since they've been fed, they might turn on you the second you unpin them. So, what now, Mr. hero-complex?" Suika asked dryly.

"I'm thinking." He grunted irritably, not willing to admit that he had no idea what to do when the victims he'd found were too dangerous, or damaged, for him to actually be capable of saving.

"... The dumb hero type?" bandages rustled as 'stumpy' shifted awkwardly where she lay. "I can't imagine why you choose to keep him around..."

"Oh, he makes up for it in other ways." Suika leered, ignoring Ranma's clear discomfort..

"I'm sure." She agreed with a raspy chuckle. "But if it's a rescue you plan..."

She shifted awkwardly again, wriggling until she forced her body into a more or less upright sitting position, revealing the tattered, torn and pitiful remnants of what were once some sort of wings.

"Do me a favor, and break my neck for me." She instructed. "Then take that which is left behind outside with you when you leave. That should be enough."

"Eh... right, that. Okay." Suika said, starting to walk forward before Ranma's arm moved, blocking her path.

"... I'll do it." He said, teeth grit.

"Suit yourself." Suika said blandly, shrugging and stepping back a pace.

Wordlessly, Ranma closed the distance and hesitated for a long moment before carefully reaching out and grasping.

"I'm sorry..." He said quietly, and sharply twisted. With a loud crack, her neck broke, and the body went limp in his hands. He dropped it as though it were hot coals.

And then, before he had the chance to dwell on what he had just done, it began to glow. And then, as he stared dumbly, it _exploded_, in a silent burst of light and heatless flame, leaving empty wrappings behind. As the glow faded, a single spark remained, settling into... not stone or glass or crystal or any other mineral that Ranma was in any way familiar with, a solid lump of some sort that glowed with a soft inner light.

"Yeah, that would be 'what's left behind'. Grab it and let's go, alright?"

"I don't... what?" Ranma said, giving voice to his confusion as he cupped the mote in his hands.

"Magic crap." Suika explained efficiently. "So, we leaving yet?"

"... I'm going to set the others loose first." He decided. "Whether the odds are good or not... I have to give them a chance."

"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say." Suika grumbled. "So, I already dealt with that. They're free."

"... Really?" Ranma asked dubiously.

"Well yeah! Depending on your definition of 'free', anyway."

"You killed them, didn't you." Ranma said more than asked, seeming resigned to the fact.

"Yeah." She admitted without the slightest trace of shame. "But since I know how humans get all jittery over it, I left the unbirthed alive. Although, you know, given that they're youkai, that means instead of being born, now they're going to tear their way out of the mother in order to survive, and they'll be ravenously hungry when they get out. What's left of dear, dead mommy will keep them for a couple minutes, yeah, but they'll still be starving when they're done. So... ready to leave yet?"

"... I think I saw a door going outside from here, so we won't have to go through that tunnel." Ranma said, tucking the mote securely away in his shirt, where it pulsed softly against his chest with a gentle warmth.

xxx

The door was hidden from the outside by a shallow cave set into a rocky hill, presumably so that no wandering hikers or campers would notice the rear entrance, unless they were spectacularly unfortunate.

Smith was waiting outside. Of _course_ Smith was waiting for them outside, with an entire squad, at least thirty, of his robo-thugs.

"And so, once again, an escape attempt is foiled by pointless heroism." He drawled. "It's your own fault, you know. Had you simply abandoned your companion to escape alone, you would have escaped, and might even have eluded our pursuit. Now, however..."

"What makes you think you can hold us?" Ranma interrupted. "This time, neither of us are going to come quietly."

Smith chuckled.

"Ah... the amusing bravado of the trapped rats. Of course, you'll find..."

Smith was interrupted by a series of wheezing crunches as his robo-thugs collapsed inwards on themselves, most ceasing function immediately.

"Yeah, I'm bored of the banter." Suika said. "Can we move this along?"

"Revised threat index: Extreme." One of the robo-suits seemed to almost wheeze, despite its voice not even slightly deviating from the standard monotone. "Advise... immediate... re... treat..."

With a soft 'clunk', the last of them ceased function entirely, leaving Smith standing very still and silent, seeming almost stunned, as though he couldn't actually believe that this was actually happening.

"I could have taken them." Ranma noted. "It... well, it would have taken longer, yeah, but I could have done it. Anyway, I want to know what's going on with this place. All the cruelty and death inside."

"Hmph..." Smith snorted, then smirked. "Well... like they say, it pays most to find a job you love to do."

The air noticeably chilled.

"So... what, then? All of that inside... was just for fun?" Ranma asked, his becoming like ice as he spoke.

"Fun?" Smith seemed almost disgusted at the question. "Of _course_ I had fun. Didn't I just say so? A rarity, too, for a government official such as myself. Oh! You flinched!"

Smith seemed to delight in noting that, and Ranma grit his teeth.

"Does it _pain_ you, my dear boy? To think that _everything_ in there was planned, overlooked and supervised, and approved of by agents of the Emperor himself?"

"... Ugh." Ranma grunted.

"That's right, boy. You've become a wanted man, by interfering with this business. This is government work... and there are similar official research centers across the entire world! But don't linger on the messy bits." Smith said, his voice becoming oily and almost serpentine. "Consider the _good_ that I've done! Why, through the study and research of these creatures, we've set medical science ahead decades, perhaps to become centuries with the next breakthroughs. We've cured illnesses that would prove fatal in all cases beforehand!"

"And all it took was a little bit of torture...?" Ranma growled.

Smith blinked.

"Why... not torture, my dear boy. Experimentation. It amounts to the same thing, yes... but humans are the only ones that can be tortured. Animals such as them..."

Ranma's knuckles cracked audibly from both fists.

"... Have I touched a nerve, dear boy? My word, do you intend to do me harm? And here I was under the impression that... _martial artists_, such as yourself made a point out of not attacking the defenseless... and I do believe you'll find me quite unarmed. Incapable of defending myself, even." he pointed out, smugly.

Ranma moved, and when he came to a stop, one hand had taken hold of Smith's shirt and lifted him off the ground with it, and the other was reared back, trembling. The movement had taken a fraction of a second at most, and Smith flinched. Slowly, Ranma relaxed his arm, letting it fall back to his side.

"... You're right." He said, reluctantly, his disgust clear. "I can't... _won't_... kill someone that can't, or won't, fight back. Not in cold blood. Not even someone like you."

Smith grinned smugly, even as Ranma turned and walked slowly to the door, opening it and shetting him down past its threshhold. He then made a careful, deliberate show of brushing some imaginary dust off of Smith's shoulders.

"But keep in mind." Ranma said, darkly, as he broke the doorknob off the inside and swung the door slowly closed. "I don't _have_ to _save_ you, either."

The smile flickered, and faded away as the door shut with a very final click, followed not long after by the sound of rocks falling. And then, very softly in the sudden silence, a series of clicks and scratches from behind him. Smith turned, very slowly. And there they were, a half dozen miserable, mostly formed monster pups, lookng exactly like the mostly formed fetuses that they were.

They sniffed loudly, and one let out a soft, drawn out whine. Another's tongue lolled out, and a third's drool began to drip noisily on the floor.

Smith screamed.

xxx

A.N.

Sooo... this chapter, uh, kind of took on a life of it's own. I mean seriously, I keep rereading it, and I keep going 'what the _hell_'. This started as just 'I want Ranma to come into contact with more stuff before Gensokyo happens, particularly a greater fairy of some kind'... and then it just mutated beyond my control. Seriously, the letter home, burgers, _what_. I guess the diamond thing makes sense in retrospect, though... but I don't even know where to _start_ with Smith and his little lab of horrors.

And yet, I just plain can't force myself to go back and rewrite the whole darn thing from scratch, either. Soo, I guess this is the first chapter of the sequel, then. Or an intermission chapter? Actually, kind of both, but still mostly filler? Meh.

I did rewrite a little, though. Originally, the beast thing was mostly _cat_, but then I went 'oh, wait, no' with the realization that that would switch Ranma from hero-mode directly to 'holy shit, holy shit, run, run, ruuun'-mode. Which just wouldn't work. So, tiny edit.

Anyway, Ranma's powerlevel... I don't really see a point in even trying to catalogue it as compared to other people. Stronger than some, weaker than most? Eh... straight fighting, he and China are probably top of the heapish. Straight fighting don't count for much in Gensokyo, though, what with the danmaku. And all the hax powers. I'll figure that out when I get there, I guess.


	2. Chapter 2

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear Mother,_

_As you have perhaps already become aware, I have recently found myself in a slight entanglement with a certain organization, the nature of which lead directly to a small altercation. I have heard some of the stories regarding this altercation, and I can assure you that the vast majority of the details regarding it are false, and the remainder were blown absurdly out of proportion._

_For further details on how such little incidents can be overreacted to, I would advise you speak with father, as through repeated experience he can be considered a wellspring of experience in that regard, although his storytelling tends to be very poor. In any case, it is to my fortune, for the moment, that not only is my name currently unknown, but there were no images recorded that showed my entire face, and it is quite unlikely that I shall be running into someone who can positively identify me._

_Suika assures me that this will be irrelevant once we have arrived at our destination, as it is a place somehow divorced from the rest of the world, no doubt through magical means. Not entirely seperated, as she explained it. Merely folded and twisted such that it is neither a part of nor seperate from the world._

_I am uncertain as to how I might arrange for correspondence once we arrive at this place. As such, this may be my last letter to you for some time, however, finding a reliable means of communication will be at the foremost of my mind._

_Your son,_

_Ranma_

xxx

"We're here." Suika said, stopping at a place that was apparently no different from the wilderness surrounding it.

Not doubting her, Ranma looked around, trying to make out what made this specific spot so special. There was nothing notable.

"So what now."

"Now?" Suika asked, taking a drink. "Now we wait to be noticed. I could get the both of us in... but it's only polite to wait for the door to be opened."

"And how long will this take?" Ranma wondered aloud.

"... That depends. If she's asleep... maybe up to a week or two?"

"Wonderful." Ranma grumbled, sighing as he pulled things out of his sleeves and pockets as he made a functional campsite. Then he paused, frowning.

"It's burning." He noted abstractly, and before Suika could question him about what he was talking about, he tugged the not-crystal out from his shirt to inspect it. It was glowing somewhat brighter than before, and pulsing slightly in his hand, like a heartbeat. Not in time with his. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or a bad one.

Slowly, the brightness faded back to its previous dull glow, the pulsing settling down into the occasional barely perceptible twitch.

"... Weird." Ranma noted, tucking it back away.

"Like I said, magic crap." Suika agreed, taking another pull of sake. "Soooo... food?"

"I'll get right on that." Ranma said, leaving a small, relative to his and Suika's appetite at least, pot of stew heating on a campfire before he left to hunt. He had tracked down and begun roasting a large deer of some sort, and Suika had pinned him down to relieve her boredom, before anything notable happened.

"That thing... it's burning again." He hissed, struggling sharply to free a hand and pull it back out of his shirt. "Ow. Ow. Ow!"

Suika grunted and, while she didn't in any way stop what she was doing, she watched with vague interest as Ranma bounced the now fiercely-shining thing around in his hand, cursing softly under his breath. Before he could toss it away, it stopped, floating gently at the highest point of its arc, the glow slowly pulsing down into near-imperceptibility. It was then that Ranma noticed that while the thing had before been slightly rough, and lumpy in several places, it was now completely smooth and round. Not quite a perfect sphere, closer to... to an egg, he realized suddenly.

The egg cracked loudly, a jagged line drawing its way down the side. Then another crack sounded, and another, as a spiderweb of hairline fractures spread across the stony shell.

"Oh! Fairy immortality, I'd almost forgotten. This should be interesting to watch." Suika said.

"You would be able to see it better if you would stop moving for a moment." Ranma noted absently, fascinated by the spectacle.

"... It's not _that_ interesting." Suika decided.

With a final crack a large fragment of shell fell away, rapidly dissolving into nothingness, and a tiny arm poked through. The rest of the shell began flaking away into nothing as the whole mass began to descend. By the time it touched down on Ranma's chest, all that was left was a winged girl the size of a child's doll, defying the laws of physics by being significantly larger than the egg she'd struggled out of.

"... Tch... looks like I lost more mass than I thought. It'll take me centuries to grow back to that size, and... well, _hello_ there." She finished in a purr, apparently only just realizing that she was sitting on someone. Her smile grew as she reached down and prodded at his chest. "_Very_ nice."

"And spoken for, stumpy." Suika interrupted cheerfully from behind the fairy, causing the smile to go fixed and wooden as she snatched her hands away as if they had been burned.

"Yes, of course, mistress. Though, I can certainly see why you keep him around, now."

"I guess eyes help with that." Suika noted absently.

"... Yes. Yes, they do." The fairy stiffly replied, before shaking the whatever-it-was off. "In any case, I was really expecting for you to just dump it outside somewhere, and I would have been fine from there. So, thank you for keeping me safe while I recuperated, although it really wasn't in any way necessary, and I'll be leaving now."

Suiting action to words, the fairy beat her wings once, floating upwards about a foot, and then zooming rapidly away. Or, at the least, this had been her clear intent. What had actually happened was that she had come to a sudden, jerking halt some distance away, almost exactly like a dog that had run full tilt to the very edge of its tether, or slammed into an invisible wall and fallen down.

"... Are you alright over there?" Ranma called, a little worried at the display.

"Just peachy." The fairy answered through a faceful of dirt, slowly pushing herself off the ground and back into the air.

The display repeated itself several times, as the deer slowly finished cooking.

"I don't _understand_." The fairy wailed later, somewhat battered by her multiple attempts to leave, as she swallowed a small bite of roast meat. "I've never had anything like this happen before. I've never _heard_ of anything like this. What's going on?"

"Mm, stuff happens." Suika said, disinterestedly.

"So, what, you basically can't leave this clearing now?" Ranma wondered aloud. "Man... sucks to be you."

The fairy paused, then frowned.

"Not quite... I could only go so far, but then the limits... invisible wall... thing... it moved a few feet." She mused.

"Really?" Ranma grunted through a mouthful of roast. "When'd that happen?"

The fairy thought about that for a moment, then her frown deepened.

"That was... when _you_ moved." She noted darkly. "When you moved a few feet to tend to the food, the barrier shifted an equal distance. So, _you're_ a key part of whatever happened, the focal point of this mess. I can only go so far from you, unless you come along... That means that I'm stuck with you, or... maybe I could just kill you and change your body into something I could carry with..."

Her musing was interrupted with the sudden sense of something looming behind her, and hot, steaming breath caressing the back of her neck, sending chills down her spine as much of her body locked up into a sudden, instinctual panic.

"B-but, I could _never_ do something like _that_." She babbled, almost desperately. "I-I mean, w-we're all friends here, right? So, so, uh, it just means I have to stick around for... forever?"

Ranma grunted nonchalantly, not impressed with either the casual death threats or how quickly she had retracted them.

"Think you'd find killing me a bit trickier than just that, anyway. But eh, what's a little attempted murder between friends?"

The fairy was stunned silent for a very brief moment by the declaration, as Ranma finished his food and set the bones aside.

"Anyway, Suika. If you don't mind... could we fight again, like the first time we met?" He asked, stretching lightly in an attempt to disguise his eagerness. "Scraps we've been having are fun, and all... but it's been a while since I went full out. I'm worried I might get rusty."

Suika blinked. Then, after a moment, her shoulders began to shake, and then she let loose a full howl of belly laughter.

"Should have been born Oni!" Suika barked, barely hiding her own delight as she slammed a fist into her palm. "All right then, but don't you dare die!"

xxx

By the time the sun rose, the clearing was thoroughly wrecked. There were deep round craters scattered about the landscape, wide swaths of trees had either been broken down or torn up completely out of the ground, and a few patches of brush were on fire. The fairy, who had at some point taken cover in a rapidly-dug hole behind a fresh stump, had curled up into the fetal position and started gibbering under her breath about 'humans not _supposed_ to be so powerful' over and over. Ranma had collapsed in the middle of the clearing, dead center in a spiral of destruction.

Suika, for her part, was fresh as a daisy, enjoying some morning sake as she tucked into what was left of the deer. Ranma groaned as he forced his body into a sitting position, and from there to standing.

"You did a _lot_ better this time." Suika noted with a smile.

"Eh... adaptability is kind of my thing." Ranma said wryly. "It helped that that big attack had a pattern to it... once I figured that out, dodging it got a little easier. _Still_ never got a good, solid hit on you, though."

"Oh, I don't know. That tornado out of nowhere at the end was pretty good. Almost nailed me with that one."

"If you couldn't _fly_, yeah. With all the people that I keep running into that _can_, that little trick is getting less and less useful."

"Hm. Surprise value, if nothing else. I mean, a Tengu you could sort of expect something like that, maybe. First time an otherwise normal person throws you into a spontaneous tornado, though? Well, assuming you aren't me, anyway."

"Yeah... I still need to work out some new tricks though." Ranma insisted as he nimbly snatched a bit of meat for himself.

Their conversation was interrupted as a nearby patch of air rippled, a tiny hole in nothing appearing and beginning to spread.

"Hm. Looks like we got noticed. Always the drama... finish eating fast, hey?"

Ranma grunted through his chewing, not bothering to reply otherwise.

As the thin hole reached the height of a large door and touched down almost to the ground, it pulsed, then spread abruptly outwards to reveal a purply, twisting mass of emptiness, gazing outwards, into and through them with a thousand sightless eyes, and... Ranma could feel his mind start to crack, just a little bit, before he wrenched his focus away from the nether between nothingness and focused instead on the woman standing in the middle of all of it.

She was tall. Funny hat and elaborate clothes, blonde hair. Numerous fluffy tails. From what he could see, she was clearly very physically strong. Not heavily musclebound, but holding herself with a clear sense of Power. She sniffed carefully before stepping out into reality, apparently habitually more inclined to trust scent over any of her other senses.

"I am Shikigami Yakumo Ran, here on behalf of Yakumo Yukari." She said in a half-distracted tone that suggested her mind was on something else and she didn't really want to be here. "What is your intent?"

"Passing through to Gensokyo." Suika chirped. Ran didn't seem to like this answer much.

"We have an agreement with-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Summed up, topside stays topside, we keep the evil dead locked up below. But, you know, there's nothing saying we_ can't_ come up if we feel like it. Generally, we just don't bother."

"I see." Ran said, poker-faced, but with the strong sense of a frown coloring her words.

"Mm... don't suppose we could cut the politicry short? I'm guessing there's something going on that you want to deal with more than sit around chatting with me, wonderful as my conversation can be. And, eh... while I'm more than happy to do this the polite, 'may I come in, madam' way, I'm more than capable of going in without permission. Sure, Yukari'll get back at me for the trespass eventually, but that's not important."

Ran was very much frowning right now, and her hands were twitching in a rythmic manner that Ranma interpreted as the desire to grab Suika by the horns, spin around really fast for a few revolutions, and then let go. He considered intervening, before abruptly realizing that his intervention had only very seldom done anyone any good, and in fact usually had a similar effect to trying to put out a small fire with a large bucket of gasoline. Instead, he decided to keep his mouth firmly shut, and was rewarded as Ran took a deep breath and forced herself to relax.

"At the very least, I stand assured that you aren't an imposter." Ran mused aloud. "And with the current situation, or even without it, I'll admit that my lady will not care much about your entry... and your retinue. So, while I would like _nothing_ less than to pound some humility into those horns and hope that it sticks... I'll leave you be until you start causing trouble. I can be patient. And I know you too well to think you're capable of keeping your nose clean forever."

Without a further word, Ran turned, golden tails swishing as she stalked back through the gap and disappeared.

"Aaah. Well, that was fun. Time to go." Suika said, following through the gap without a second thought.

Ranma stared for a moment at the gap, once more feeling the edges of his mind begin to fray, before shaking his head and marching forward, eyes firmly shut. It helped less than he had hoped.

"Hey! Wait for meeee!" The fairy yelled, zipping through the air and just barely clearing the gap before it closed, leaving a thoroughly wrecked camping site behind.

The other end of the gap spat them out into a snowdrift the size of a large bus.

xxx

"So. This wasn't _quite_ what I had in mind when you described Gensokyo." Ranma noted, sitting next to a bonfire hastily crafted from a dead tree, or at the least a nearby tree that had looked like it might be dead, and liberal applications of hellfire. "I'd really expected, eh... more obviously magic wonderland and less... you know... snow. Long winters here?"

"There's magic." The fairy countered immediately. "For beings in tune with such things, the air we're breathing and ground we stand on, every plant and even... no, most especially the snow covering it all. They're all thrumming, _singing_ with the sort of concentrated magical presence that I haven't felt for _thousands_ of years."

"Well put." A new voice sounded. "Although, unusually verbose and eloquent, for a fairy. Gensokyo is indeed a locus, rather, a focal point of mystic and magical energies, gathered together in a mass a thousandfold denser than anywhere outside the Boundary. But more importantly..."

The newcomer revealed herself, another blonde in a blue dress and heavy boots, sitting calmly on a tree branch, giving no heed to the weather or temperature.

"Who is this before me, burning a tree so near to my home?"

"I've been told, when you ask for another person's name, it's only polite to offer your own first." Ranma said absently.

The blonde seemed surprised, almost taken aback for a moment, before an amused look settled.

"You're lecturing me on manners, while you burn one of my trees, without a hint of remorse or shame? How very... human, of you. Even so. My name is Alice Margatroid. My profession is that of a dollmaker, and I am an accomplished magician. This patch of the magical forest, including the tree you've set ablaze, is mine. And you?"

"... Ranma Saotome, practicioner and heir to the Saotome school of martial arts."

"Suika Ibuki." Suika said, offering no further information about herself.

"My name is-"

"Stumpy." Suika interrupted.

"_No it isn't_." The fairy insisted.

"Hm. In any case... I bear a grievance against you. I had planned to harvest wood from that tree, enough, at an estimate, to fashion at least two dozen dolls. That wood is now wasted."

"Not so. If the fire's keeping us warm, then it can't be a waste." Suika countered.

"Tch. How impudent." Alice said, floating gently off of the branch to hover in midair. "I think I should chide you."

"Oh? Have fun, Ranma."

"What? I _can't fly_." He objected. He would have continued, except that at that very moment he was forced to hurl himself bodily out of the way of an orb of energy the size of a beach ball.

"Pay attention to the danmaku, boy." Alice chided. "I don't want to hurt you badly, just enough to be a fitting punishment."

"Tch. No choice, huh." he grumbled, as five uniformed dolls floated out from nearby and took up positon around Alice, similar, albeit smaller, orbs of light swelling between their hands. "This'll be... _fun_."

The barrage began, and Ranma was immediately forced on the defensive, weaving in between the multicolored bullets, forced into ever-increasing acrobatics in order to avoid being hit, only occasionally able to snatch a moment to launch his own retaliatory blast, which was deflected every time by one of the dolls switching to defense and creating a shield of some sort. Alice, clearly impressed with his dodging skill even when mostly groundbound, responded by increasing the speed and density.

"Not good... can't jump that high." Ranma mumbled to himself. "If I can't close, then..."

Then he saw it. An opening. As she floated, Alice had drifted very slightly in one direction, and now she was close enough to a tree that one good leap from the top, and... but there was a problem. First, there was the danger that if he started running full tilt for the tree, she might figure out what he was doing and fly away. Second, the tree in question was the one they had set on fire.

A brilliant flash of insight hit him, and he grinned, then started running.

"Chestnut..." He said aloud, focusing ki down through his legs and feet, instead of his arms. "... Dancing through Flames!" He finished with a yell, as he surged forward in a blur, at least four times his previous top speed, gathering a chi blast in one hand and holding it as he rocketed towards the burning tree.

He impacted, and the tree cracked loudly and began to slowly fall as he shot up the side, too fast to register the heat of the flames, the rest of the world seeming to have slown down around him. Alice's expression had just begun to shift from confusion to a stunned realization as he reached the top and pushed off with enough force that the already weakened wood broke off in an explosion of burning splinters.

He overshot a little, having forgotten to account for his new speed in the jump, but that was fine. As he passed above Alice, he spun in midair, the ki-blast in his hands billowing outwards to the size of a beach ball, then a small car, then a large one, then to the size of a double-decker bus before he launched it with a heave straight downwards, into Alice's back.

Shortly afterward, he landed gently next to Alice, who was lying face-up in the center of a crater, slightly smoking dolls at her side.

"So, where do we go from here?" Ranma wondered aloud, as Alice rose, entirely undamaged and not even smudged by being blasted into the ground, dolls rising with her, albeit a bit slower.

"First strike to you, human." She conceded with a nod. "Ah... how tiring. I suppose that's enough for now."

"Hey... that's something for the winner to say."

"Don't push your luck." Alice replied with a snort. "I wasn't anything near a quarter of my full power, and I'm already tired from earlier. I can still swat you like the bothersome fly you are, if you insist."

"Hey, the loser should pay a penalty." Suika interjected. "You should let us stay at your place for a while."

"Eh? And when did I agree to this?"

"Hm. If you want, I can play this time too."

"Ugh... tch, fine. Follow me."

xxx

A.N. You have no idea how tempted I am to start ending the chapters with 'Stage Clear'. Nn. Anyway, yeah, shorter chapter. I could have kept going from here, I suppose, but that was a pretty good cut-off point, and it's been a while since I posted anything. Sorry about that, my previous writing computer basically heaved a mighty gasp and died on me.

Anyway, still figuring out how I want to portray Gensokyo. Characters, relationships, customs, etc. It's a work in progress. Anyway, yeah, they're basically plunked in riiiiight at the end of PCB, to the degree that when they wake up next all the snow will be _gone_ in a sudden springtime. There might be a little filler forthcoming, or I might just jump straight ahead to IaMP.

Also. No magic instant powerups, Ranma has to figure stuff out on his own, mostly. Yeah, the tweaked fairy-immortality thing was a little misleading there, I guess. Oh well. And yeah, currently, a top form and not-recently-wrecked-by(heroine of choice) Alice should have absolutely demolished him. He scraped out a technical victory through a combination of luck, circumstances, and Alice not taking him particularly seriously.

Eh, what else... OH, Ran. Yeah, I was going to have Suika and Ranma aggravate her in tandem until she snapped and fought them in a two on one grudge match or something. That, uh, obviously didn't happen. It would have been great, yes, but I simply found myself incapable of banging the scene out for some reason. Instead, Ranma gets to demonstrate his ludicrous stockpile of ranks in 'Genre Savvy: Self' again.

Fairy explanation time! Uh... I'm going to say that it's the product of living in a low-magic environment as opposed to a high-magic environment. She's probably weak even compared to stage one nameless fairies, but a lot smarter, because... all right, give me a second. Okay, because with the high magical density of Gensokyo, it's fairies naturally grow stronger and so don't have any particular pressure to learn much of anything, or really even think often. It's the opposite outside the boundary, because it's more difficult for fairies to survive long there, or something. Yeah, I think that works. I'll go with that.

Also, she has a name. I just haven't decided what it is yet. At the moment, I'm thinking vaguely along the lines of 'Diamond Dust', in reference to the the three mischievous fairies. Except, I just plain don't like that name, for some reason. It makes me feel like I'm setting things up to cross this with final fantasy. I'm not. I'm totally not. _SHUT UP, BRAIN. _Totally not.

Aaand, I think that's good for now.


	3. Chapter 3

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear Mother,_

_We have arrived at our destination, through a process both harrowing and mercifully brief. I will admit that I could happily spend the entirety of the rest of my life in avoiding a repeated trip through such means. Naturally, I have no doubt in my mind that another such will be required of me at some point._

_The weather of this place seems to tend towards an unusual harshness and extended fury. As you well know, it is currently reaching towards the middle of the spring season, yet arrival found nothing less than knee deep snow as far as the eye could see, at the shallowest. Having been assured that magic was involved, I suspect that spring, when it does come to this place, shall be both short and abrupt, being more of a hinge between bitingly cold winters and swelteringly hot summers. There is, of course, the other possibility, that I am incorrect and the magic is in the unusual extension and severity of the winter weather, and that there is normally a more average duration of seasons._

_Those populating this place seem to have a tendency towards unusual power and quick tempers as well, although I may be incorrect in this regard, as I have only met two representatives of their number at this point. Both, however, were significantly more powerful than any opponent Nerima could bring against me. I am unsure exactly what words can be used to quantify their strength, simply that they, like Suika, were both much more powerful than I. I find myself, then, with a combination of profound relief and disappointment that the first was too occupied with other concerns for Suika alone to goad her into battle, and the second was still metaphorically licking wounds after a recent battle and as such was in no particular mood to continue after I managed to score a decisive blow, despite the fact that any damage I had inflicted swiftly proved to be negligible at best._

_We are currently taking lodging at the home of the second. As I am sure you will wish further details than that, her home is simple, but comfortable, built along the design of some sort of western architecture that I do not specifically recognize, but is quite efficient at maintaining a warm interior. She is both a magician and dollmaker of some apparent renown, and should I discover some means by which this letter might be delivered to you, I shall have to make inquiries as to bartering for an example of her work. A souvenir, if you will. To answer the questions that I know have now arisen, in order: Yes, mother, she is attractive. No, mother, I have not slept with her. No, mother, I'm afraid I have no intention of sleeping with her. I am afraid that I have had enough romantic entanglements and confusion to last a lifetime, and am quite satisfied with the current situation as it is._

_As it is now exceptionally unlikely that we will be found by any means of tracking, I suppose that it is beyond due time for me to relay messages to the others of Nerima. If this letter should ever find its way into your hands, please convey these._

_To Akane, Shampoo, Ukyou, Kodachi, and any other romantic entanglement that may have arrived in Nerima to seek me out, no doubt Father's work, my best well-wishes. I hope they find, somewhere, men thoroughly deserving of everything they can bring to them. Convey also my regret that they chose, unanimously, to turn their courtship into an attempt to force me to heel, like a wild animal that needed to be tamed, despite that not a single one of them were capable of managing such a feat. It is simply their poor fortune that not only did I choose to play by the rules they imposed, but that Suika did prove to be capable, and snatched the prize away from them. Such is life, or so it seems. Better luck next time, girls._

_To Ryoga, Kuno, and Mousse, my undying contempt. Not for their attempt upon my life, as I have long since grown accustomed to such. Rather, for their absurdly pathetic failure at the attempt. To Cologne, I simply wish to say: "BAHAHAHA! I win, you old ghoul! Take that!"_

_To father and Tendo-san, express my apology that the schools will not be united in my generation. Then, if you would be so kind, make the suggestion that one of them acquire a suitable Jusenkyou curse, such that the agreement might be fulfilled in theirs. If at all possible, photograph or record their reaction to such a suggestion._

_To Happosai, express my further apology that I am no longer able to continue training under him, unless he somehow tracks us down. Given how widely traveled he seems to be, I'm sure it isn't impossible, however I would much prefer in such a situation that he left baggage behind. Also, I still wish the tape destroyed. He'll understand to what I refer._

_Your son,_

_Ranma_

Ranma calmly folded the letter and sealed it in an envelope, and for a long time, he simply stared blankly at it. Then, with a soft sigh, he tucked it away into a ki-pocket and blew out the candle.

xxx

When Alice woke that morning, it was to an unusual mixture of noise and scent where she was accustomed to silence and stillness before she activated her dolls and set them to pursuing household chores. There was a slight clatter of metal against metal, accompanied by an almost tantalizing sizzling noise. She sniffed carefully, confirming her suspicion. Bacon. Also, eggs, and a scent of dough that could be either biscuits or pancakes. Someone was cooking breakfast.

She was puzzled at this turn of event, before she recalled the previous day. Well, good. At least one of the ones who had forced their way into her home had decided to make themselves useful. She rose, and made her way to her bathroom to clean off the previous night's feverish sweat before she returned to the bedroom, where she leisurely changed her nightdress for daywear before making her way to the kitchen.

Interestingly enough, it was the human who was standing there, aproned and busying himself about the stovetop, rather than the half-expected fairy. It took her a brief moment to reconcile this image with her previous image of the rude young man.

"Would you like mushrooms in your eggs?" He asked, before she had quite managed it.

"No. I abhor them." She replied instantly, then shook her head. "Minced onion and ham, if you would."

Ranma nodded, choosing not to ask why she had stored a large basket of the fungus if she had no intention of eating them. Alice, for her part, left him to cooking and began the morning process of activating and directing her dolls.

By the time this was complete the other pair of the trio had drug themselves out of bed and were waiting, in varied degrees of impatience, to be fed. Ranma exited the kitchen, four plates balanced perfectly on his arms, a pitcher of steaming coffee in one hand, a platter of bacon in the other, and a bowl full of warm biscuits on top of his head. In a stunning display of dexterity and balance that Alice wasn't entirely sure how he had managed, despite watching from beginning to end, he somehow laid everything out without spilling or breaking anything, then returned to fetch utensils and cups in a similar single trip.

Suika had finished her food in that time, and was now licking her fingers clean. Having eyed the black drink with some measure of distrust, she instead retrieved her gourd and took a deep draw from it before sprawling out over a comfortable looking chair. Alice's eye twitched.

"She usually eats a lot more than that." Ranma noted, having begun eating himself.

"High ambient magical energy. I, also, am quite full now." The fairy replied, floating away.

Seeing that Ranma was still obviously puzzled, Alice decided to explain as she settled down to the meal.

"Being of an innately magical nature, all youkai are, to a great degree, capable of mostly subsisting off of ambient magical energy, provided that it is plentiful enough. In such conditions, we require no more physical sustenance than the average human, as our metabolism is no longer constantly working to transform ingested food to magical energy."

"Oh." Ranma replied awkwardly, staring at the meal he'd intended to be just enough to last until lunchtime, but had proven to be significantly more. He shrugged and filled his plate again. "That seems convenient."

"It is." Alice finished her coffee, then paused and nodded at him. "Thank you."

Ranma blinked as she left, and a pair of nondescript dolls floated in and began collecting used dishes.

"Geeze... don't thank me, it's your food." He grumbled, snagging several of the biscuits for later, and a handful of bacon for now, before leaving the dolls to their efforts.

Outside, as he'd seen through the windows but somewhat doubted, it was a very pleasant spring day. Grass was green, the sun was shining, birds were singing, and his brain was breaking trying to comprehend where, exactly, all the thousands upon thousands of gallons of water contained in all the snow that had been there yesterday had gone.

"Magic... huh. I guess I'll have to keep my mind open. Further than usual, even."

With a shrug, he leapt up to the roof and settled in to a combination of meditation and deep, serious thought about how he was going to surmount the ridiculously huge disadvantage that not being capable of flight was proving to be. About an hour later, having only mused his way to the point where he was contemplating a pair of shoes with really big springs bolted to the bottom, he sighed in disgust and gave it up as a bad job.

There was no help for it. He would just have to learn how to fly.

"Hey, Suika. Need your help with something."

Minutes later, the preparation was complete, and Alice was standing outside to watch, dumbfounded.

"I'm reasonably sure that this is neither in any way safe or a possible method of flight acquisition. Are you quite sure..."

"Relax." Ranma said flippantly, wriggling slightly to make sure that the ropes binding his forearms and legs together were secure. "It'll be no problem. Suika throws me straight up, and from there there are only two options. Either I hit the ground, or I don't. Simple."

"I... see." Alice said slowly, obviously searching for apt words to explain that that was not in any way how probability worked. "Well... goodbye, then, Ranma Saotome." she finished with a sense of dull finality.

"Oh, I'll be back before you know it. Yeah, I think we're ready to roll, Suika. Let's get started."

"'Kay."

She spit in her hands, rubbed them together, and grabbed two fistfuls of the front of Rannma's shirt before pivoting into a twist. She spun wildly, each revolution going faster and faster, until she achieved proper speed and kicked off the ground, still spinning as she twisted her entire body at a ninety degree angle and let go, launching Ranma directly into the sky.

Almost immediately after that a small patch of Alice's roof exploded upwards, a surprised and terrified fairy screaming at the top of her lungs as she rocketed upwards at an almost equal speed.

"Well, huh. Looks like it's a maximum distance for_ any_ direction, not just a two dimensional perimeter. How about that." Suika noted as both became twin pinpricks in the sky, then disappeared.

"... My _roof_." Alice said, flatly.

There were about ten seconds of of awkward silence as Suika continued staring upward, pretending she hadn't heard Alice's complaint.

"Aaaand here they come back." She chirped, pointing out a tiny spot in the sky, which rapidly grew, along with a whistling noise. She considered that, then blinked and hastily floated several feet to the left.

Ranma impacted the ground, kicking up a large cloud of dust and burying himself in a deep, Ranma shaped hole. The fairy was marginally better off, having come to a panting, sweaty, and trembling halt about an inch and a half above the ground

"WHYYYYYYY?" She wailed, turning wide, watery eyes to Suika, who shrugged in response.

"Eh... he asked."

"Yes, yes, this is all well and good, but more importantly, _my roof_."

"My fault." Ranma said from the hole, cutting the impending fury short as he heaved himself up and out of the hole, ropes snapped and covered from head to toe in rich black earth. He shook himself slightly, and most of the dirt fell off. "Yeah, I'll fix that, don't worry. Just give me a second to-"

Ranma fell face first into the ground, with a sound much like a 'splut'.

"... Yeah, _wow_, my legs are not working at _all_ right now." He continued rambling, semi-coherently.

"You aren't dead." Alice noted flatly.

"Nope. I'm good at that whole not dying when I'm supposed to thing. Lots of practice."

"I can imagine." she said, eying the hole he'd left in her lawn, shaking her head with a vague disgust. "When you can move again, bathe. Then you can fix the roof, and then you can see about preparing dinner."

Ranma gave a half-hearted thumbs up as he continued lying prone.

xxx

Much to Alice's interest, Ranma demonstrated a resilience that she was hard-pressed to believe was human in origin as, within the hour, he had regained mobility and cleaned himself. Following that, he had mended the roof with an ease that bespoke a great deal of experience with similar work, although he was clearly not familiar with the shingles he was using, evidenced by a few moments of hesitation and a false start or two, though he quickly got the knack of it, and then got on with early preparations for dinner.

It was worrisome, when taken as a whole. The extreme durability meant that he likely pulled such foolhardy stunts as before with enough regularity that, by all rights, he should be long dead. The familiarity with building repair meant that buildings in his vicinity had a tendecy to become damaged. This did _not_ bode well for her house.

Still, after repressing the irrational fury that nearly all youkai would experience when contemplating potential damage to anything they had claimed as theirs, she was forced to admit that it wasn't like the house didn't recieve a fair bit of semi-regular damage _anyway_, and he had already proven himself significantly more useful in repairing it than any level of ability she'd previously managed to coax out of her dolls. So, in that respect, it was an overall gain. The food was also a plus... although it wasn't prepared such that it matched her preferences in even the tiniest of details, as her dolls would have, it left the ones she would have slated towards such duties free to assist her as she repaired and, when necessary, replaced the dolls that had been damaged in her recent battle.

She was already at least twenty five percent more efficient with the extra, tiny hands, and it would shave several days off the time it would take until her full complement were battle-ready again, and she could return her focus to other projects. A reasonable argument in the boy's favor, at the very least.

On the other hand, there were his traveling companions to consider. Thus far, the fairy and oni had literally done nothing but eat her food and sleep on her furniture. It was infuriating, insulting, that they had forced their way into her home, to become an unrepentant burden.

Unfortunately, the positives and negatives of the situation more or less balanced out, and so she wasn't sure how she should proceed. Part of her wanted to throw them out, immediately, right this instant and before they had a chance to damage anything beyond repair. Part of her wanted to grudgingly allow them to remain, but use the boy for everything she could manage to force him into, if only to spite the other two's uselessness. Part of her, the baser, instinctual and animalistic youkai part, wanted nothing less than to massacre them all for their myriad of tresspasses, but held itself at bay out of sheer wariness. The human, alone, had already proven himself unusually powerful, and there had as yet been no indication of how strong the other two were... it could be that they were weaker, and she could take them easily, once she had returned to full fighting capacity. Then, it could be that they were stronger, and would dominate her in battle. It was not something easily risked, as any sort of battle would have effects on the youkai part of her, win or lose.

In the end, she simply decided to gracefully accept their presence. For now, they were welcome, to varying begrudged degrees. Whether that would change by the time her platoon was repaired... well, that simply remained to be seen.

In any case, she could smell from her workshop that dinner was nearly prepared. She nodded to herself and inspected the doll she had been working on. Perfect condition, and it only required re-activation, which would only take a matter of minutes and an influx of magical energy. She would do that first, then make herself presentable and head down to eat.

xxx

"Tomorrow, you'll need to fetch something with me." Alice said, as the meal drew to a close. Ranma blinked, but nodded as he finished his rice.

"So, what's the plan?"

"I'll explain momentarily. Clear the table first."

Ranma grunted, but acceded. It was the work of only moments, with doll assistantce. When he returned from the kitchen, Alice had spread a pair of maps across the table. One large map, consisting of what he could only assume was the entirety of Gensokyo. Another, somewhat smaller map, providing a larger and more detailed view of a small part of it... this forest, unless he was very mistaken. Unlike the mostly-pristine larger map, the smaller one was pockmarked and blemished, bearing numerous lines, markings, and brief scribbled notes that Alice had left to herself about certain locations. This map, unlike the other, had been used heavily.

"It is fact that youkai have a tendency towards territorial natures." Alice began. "Not unanimously, of course, but it's a general rule of thumb. Weak youkai usually go well out of their way to avoid intruding on the domains of stronger youkai, and most stronger youkai generally don't bother to often leave their territories. As such, for humans that, for whatever reason, aren't inclined towards grouping together in villages for security, the safest thing to do is to make arrangements with a reasonably powerful youkai, and live within the boundary of their territory."

"That's... actually pretty smart." Ranma mused. "Y'know, as long as they pick someone who'll make deals and won't just eat them without thinking about it, anyway."

Alice paused for a long moment, staring unblinkingly at him, before she returned her focus to the maps.

"An unusually astute observation. Yes, the situation you've suggested is more than possible, which is why very few humans choose to take such a calculated risk. Then, it is not exactly likely, either. While it is true that youkai have a tendency to prey upon humanity..." Alice paused, seeming to not be quite certain which words to use. "The humans of Gensokyo are a... hardy people, perhaps would be the best term? Feeding upon them can bring... reprisals. It is not uncommon for a human who has lived from birth within the border to develop power outstripping that of youkai. Even to the degree of the most powerful of youkai."

At this point, Alice seemed lost in thought for a moment, one hand rubbing awkwardly at her throat before she shook herself.

"As such, it is typically unwise." She said, with an air of finality. "Which isn't to say that it doesn't _happen_, assuming that the youkai in question is reasonably confident that they can get away with it, or if they are too young or stupid to realize the folly of their actions, or if circumstances guarantee that the human in question will not be missed until there is no possible way of proving any given youkai's complicity... it is simply that while overconfident, foolish humans might be taken by youkai, the overconfident, foolish youkai who prey upon them have a habit of coming to nasty ends themselves. In general, youkai that insist on eating man-flesh restrain themselves to either those who have very recently managed to wander into Gensokyo, and haven't yet become a part of its human society, or simply hunt outside the Boundary itself, where youkai are not widely believed in, or suspected after sudden disappearances, and in any case vengeance would be difficult to manage after they have sated themselves and returned."

"That's... good to know?" Ranma replied dubiously, in a tone of voice that heavily implied that he wasn't at all sure that he was, in fact, happier knowing all of this. Alice blinked.

"In any case, our discussion seems to have diverged significantly from my intent. Suffice it to say that I am disinterested in the trouble that killing humans inside Gensokyo can call down, which I believe brings us to my point. I have made arrangements with humans to remain within my particular patch of forest."

She paused for only a moment to point out four small dots within the large circle around the icon that Ranma could only assume represented the house they were sitting in now.

"This is on two conditions. First, that they not bother me unduly. I am not a... 'people-person'. On top of that, I often run experiments which, from time to time, go dangerously awry. Hence why I discourage visitors. Second, that I am paid a regular tithe. A small, fair amount, collected approximately once a month... rather, every four weeks. As there are four of them, I set the same day aside every week to visit one of them and collect what I am owed, after the social niceties are properly observed. Occasionally, one of them will have news of note, whether it be of fairies swarming out of season or if some particularly foolish newborn youkai is sniffing around the area. In any case, dolls are not suited for carrying loads above a certain weight, and so I usually have to do so myself. However, as long as another option is available, I may as well make use of it. Rather, you."

"Packmule, huh? Eh... I guess I can live with that." Ranma said. "If the problem is the doll's size, though, then why not just make a bigger one?"

Alice went silent, frozen in thought as an unusual expression came over her face, eyes focused on nothing at all. After a moment she began mumbling to herself, too softly for Ranma to make anything out. After a few moments, she shook her head briskly, snapping herself out of whatever stupor she had fallen into.

"That... is a very reasonable suggestion." She mused aloud. "I'll take it under advisement. Something to consider later, at the least, once more pressing matters have been dealt with. In any case..."

"Heee~eey." A half drunk voice sang out through the house. "Whyyy aren't you in my beeed yeeet? I'm waiii~tiiing..."

"Hm. Duty calls." Ranma mumbled dryly to himself, while Alice mainly just looked completely appalled at the bold proclamation. "On that note, I suppose I've got to be going. I assume we'll not be going anywhere until after breakfast at least? You can fill me in on anything important that you haven't gotten to yet then."

"Y-yes." Alice stuttered, not entirely sure whether the heat rising to her face was embarrasment or rage.

xxx

A.N.

Chapter's a bit short again. Hm. Well, I suppose it's _theoretically_ possible that I could cram something more in here, but... eh. This seems like a pretty good stopping place.

Now, let's see how long it takes you all to realize that this _whole chapter_ can be summed up as 'Ranma does chores for Alice while Suika and the fairy goof off'. :Trollface:... Wait, no am I trolling you guys, or am I trolling _myself_? Woah. This just got complicated.

Anyway, TOUHOUWIKI. Touhouwiki is awesome. A lot of this chapter was figuring out how I wanted to have Alice's personality be, veering closer to Canon or Fanon, or just scrap it all and make shit up. Fortunately, the_ extensive_ article they have on Alice (and, I guess, everyone/thing else) made stuff a little easier. Still have tweaked stuff, and will be tweaking stuff, but yanno. Wiki. Awesome. 'Nuff said. Much more helpful than playing through PCB with every character again was, anyway.

Eh... thinking of something else to mention, but being as this is basically a character-development-filler-chapter, not much comes to mind. Oh, wait. Yeah, the thing where he tried, unsuccessfully to learn how to fly. Yeah, he's been toughened up through various means, he wouldn't have walked away from something like that before meeting Suika. He wouldn't neccessarily have _tried_ something like that, either, but that's neither here nor there. Details.

Next chapter: Will it be filler? Who knows?


	4. Chapter 4

Away to Neverland

xxx

_To my Dear Son,_

_Things have become somewhat hectic in the wake of your departure. As you expected, it had been no more than a matter of hours before I discovered that your letter had been stolen, STOLEN, from my own house. It seems that you were correct, and I should not have flaunted the fact that you had contacted me before your jealous suitors and romantic rivals. For that, I apologize, and am grateful that you have had the presence of mind to conceal your true location._

_I have recieved the 'bride-price', although I am afraid that Genma was swift in confiscating the sake for his own purposes. I assume that he either did not recognize or did not notice the stone, else he would have made off with it as well. I have since taken it to a trustworthy jeweler whose acquaintance I had made in my youth, from whom I recieved a princely sum in exchange, more than enough to be considered a large, even extravagant dowry, were we judging by more traditional means._

_In regard to your mention of your friend's marital status, I have made a few brief inquiries amongst little Nabiki's social circle, and unfortunately found that none of them can be considered particularly bride-worthy at this juncture. After extending my view somewhat, I have found several potential candidates, although I am afraid that the only one you would be familiar with would be Kasumi._

_Moving along to recent events of note, a large contigent of miss Cologne's tribeswomen have arrived recently, and I believe they intend to split up so as to search the entire nation for you, top to bottom. Alternatively, given master Happosai's habits and incessant provocations, they may simply be gathering force in an attempt to destroy their long-time enemy. Aside from that, I'm afraid Soun has taken a turn for the worse, having become quite insistent that you will be returning any day now to marry his daughter. In his rantings, he has swayed several to his side, and while you will no doubt be pleased of this considering that it means they are not actively seeking you out, it leaves me in an uncomfortable position, as they seem to have begun regularly spying upon me, as though convinced you might be hiding under the tablecloths or in the linen cupboards. Most frustrating. On top of this, several young women (and one charming young man! Does that husband of mine have no sense?) have arrived in Nerima to seek you out. Most were dissuaded, upon explanation of the situation, however two in particular seemed to become still more determined to find you afterwards. I'm afraid that I overheard some hushed whispers between them, and it seems that they are devil-hunters of a sort. Do pass on my regards and warnings to your Suika, dear._

_On a somewhat related note to Soun, Genma has come to a different conclusion. He has decided, for lack of any better words, to 'cut his losses' regarding you and start afresh, with a new heir, which he intends to train to become your equal or better, without making any of the mistakes he seems to feel he made with you. Exactly which parts he feels were mistakes, however, and which he feels he handled entirely correctly, give me cause for concern. Further, such would naturally require him siring another child, and while Genma was a charming, handsome man in our youth, I am afraid he has somewhat let himself go recently. Perhaps an effect of his unfortunate curse? I am afraid I'm still rather confused about the particulars of those. Further still, even were he able to charm his way back into my good graces, I am afraid that I am unable to bring myself to consider bearing another child, only to raise it for a few short years, then to be cut entirely out of its life for a decade. One such experience was, I'm afraid, trying enough._

_In all honesty, and in the strictest confidence, I have for quite some time been seriously considering divorcing the man, and the reasons to do so have recently begun to significantly outweigh the reasons not to do so._

_With loving regard, your Mother,_

_Nodoka_

Nodoka paused for a moment, nibbling delicately at the tip of her pen before turning her attention back to the paper before her.

_P.S._

_I feel it quite likely that you either had little to do with the selection of photographs, or that Suika slipped extras in while you were somehow distracted. In either case, please notify her that, while I can certainly appreciate hard proof of your manliness, and do understand that there is something of a significant culture gap involved, sending photographs of a couple who are... well, there is no more delicate term for it that I can recall offhand... clearly in the act of physical consumnation, to the mother of either member of the couple in question is, generally speaking, something of a taboo among humans in general. As well as that, I am afraid that one of them was unfortunately misplaced, and Akane has been touting it throughout the whole district, declaring it as proof that she was 'right all along', whatever she may mean by that._

_With that out of the way, I must admit that I am morbidly fascinated by several of the photographs, as I was previously unaware that some of the demonstrated antics were possible without serious damage to one or both partners, although judging from the third picture, the one taken by the oak tree, I suppose that they really aren't. I imagine that was quite painful, and I do hope you had the bone re-set properly. I suppose it is none of my business saying this, but I would feel much better about your night-time activites if there was less risk of you being permamently crippled by them, and I must admit that the seventh picture, the one with all the blood, is MOST unsettling. I don't care how durable your training has left you, you are my baby boy, and I worry about you. PLEASE try to keep more of that in your veins, dear?_

Carefully, Nodoka set the pen aside and re-read the letter, nodding to herself as she confirmed that she had covered all the highlights. She carefully folded the paper with exacting precision, then slid it into a plain-looking envelope, which she sealed with a drop of candlewax.

Then her face fell as she suddenly recalled that, while she had written the letter, she had no real way of knowing where to send it to. After a moment, she sighed and set it aside on her desktop, resolving to consider the matter more thoroughly later, and retired to bed.

Not long after, wordlessly, a hole opened in nothingness, and an arm slid delicately out.

xxx

Ranma focused quietly, in the depths of contemplation of flight. He had it this time, he was sure of it. In retrospect, it was obvious, and he couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of this first.

It came down to his ki-blasts, and the control he had over them. He could tweak, just for example, their flight pattern, how they curved, their accuracy... any number of details. Most importantly, and most tellingly, was that he didn't actually_ throw_ his ki-blasts at all, but rather _projected_ them. It was all in the mind... gathering ki in his hand and throwing it like a ball made it _easier_, yes, orders of magnitude easier even, but it wasn't impossible to launch a blast through willpower and focus alone.

The key, he had decided, would simply be gathering that energy _inside_, and then moving it around would drag his body with it. From there, a little practice and voila. He would be flying. And it wasn't like he didn't have some experience with internal manipulation already, what with the chestnut fist and variations thereof.

No time like the present to give his theory a test-run, then.

He focused, inhaling deeply as he gathered his ki to his navel, feeling it within himself as he shaped it and prepared. Just a test... just float a little bit up and forwards, to begin. He focused...

With a sickening squelch that forced his eyes to snap open, the gathered orb of energy lurched forward and out of his torso, leaving a sucking hole behind. He blinked, seeming incapable of comprehending what had just happened for a few moments before the blood began to pour in earnest and the ball of light winked out.

Then he swore, violently.

If Alice wondered why, exactly, Ranma's torso was heavily bandaged later as he cooked breakfast, she chose not to ask.

xxx

"Rain." Ranma grumbled to himself, looking sourly out the window as he ate.

It wasn't a particularly harsh, or heavy rain, actually. More of a light trickle, just the other side of a heavy mist, barely enough to be called rain. It was, however, falling steadily, and with no signs that it would let up for at least the better part of the day.

"I have umbrellas." Alice pointed out, not particularly bothered by the weather. "Is there some problem?"

"Umbrellas won't help... umbrellas _never_ help." Ranma groused. "Ugh. I should have known it was too good to last. No matter what I do, It's going to happen today."

Ranma's entire body seemed to sag with depression as he set his plate down, staring balefully out the window for a moment before he shook it off and stood.

"No point putting it off, then..." he grumbled as he moved into the kitchen. "And this way I might not soak my clothes completely."

There was the sound of running water, and Alice blinked as a young woman that could in almost every respect pass for Ranma's sister walked back out.

"... Fascinating." She said, after an appropriate moment for her mind's gears to turn. "Some sort of transformative magic?"

"A curse. Long story, though it's been easing up on me a little recently."

"Hm. No time for long stories right now... just the cliff notes version, if you would."

"Cursed training ground, warnings all in a different language, my dad and I were stupid. Long story short, cold water for girl type, warm or hot to go back to normal."

"I see..." Alice blinked, and glanced out the window. "I can imagine, then, how a rainy day might trouble you."

"Yeah, no kidding." Ranma griped. "Worst part, the curse seems like it has a mind of its own, sometimes... water from _nowhere_, at the worst possible times... stupid curse."

"If you would prefer to remain here..." Alice started to offer, before being interrupted.

"Nah, nah, I was going to get wet _somehow_ today no matter what I did." Ranma said, with a vaguely depressed, fatalistic air. "Better to just man up, rather than end up with your roof getting a second hole in it in as many days."

"... Quite." Alice said, rather than contest Ranma's choice of phrase, somehow sensing that this was dangerous territory. "In any case, umbrellas are in the closet just off the entry. Pick whichever one you prefer, except the blue one."

The blue one was powder blue, and somehow, despite being a perfectly serviceable umbrella, seemed to exude an aura of girliness that left Ranma shuddering and with aching teeth. Even if she hadn't been warned against it, Ranma wouldn't have gone with the blue one. Instead, she dusted off a somewhat older, more traditional-looking umbrella made of bamboo. It creaked reassuringly in her hand... it would keep the rain off and, if it proved neccessary, was sturdy enough to serve as a makeshift cudgel.

The odds of Ranma _needing_ something to hit things with aside from her fists was pretty low... but on the other hand, pretty low odds had a tendency of cropping up, and it would be better to have something on hand if it was needed than to be stuck rummaging for deadwood.

The fairy drifted in and settled on her shoulder, drifting off to sleep while she waited for Alice. Surprising, until she recalled that she couldn't actually move too far away, and she probably considered this a better bet than being suddenly drug through the nearest wall and into the rain... although now that she thought about it, Ranma wasn't entirely sure that the fairy had ever actually been made aware of the curse, so...

"Who the hell are you!" The fairy snapped, shooting into full awareness, zipping a couple feet away from Ranma so she could properly point an accusatory finger.

"Dummy. Pay more attention, will you? I could have been anyone." Ranma chided.

"Bu-wha?" Was the eloquent response.

"Ah, Ranma. Ready to leave?" Alice asked as she walked through and gathered her umbrella, a pair of dolls floating at her sides, not actually bothering to stop and see if she _was_ ready to leave.

"What's going-?"

"Yeah, yeah. Might as well get the job done." Ranma grumbled, hefting her own umbrella to one shoulder as she started to step out.

"I... you... what is this i dont even... Hey! Wait for me!"

xxx

"So... tell me a little about danmaku?" Ranma asked, to pass the time as they walked through the rain.

"... Ah. That's right, you're an outsider." Alice mused. "Danmaku is how we fight, settle our differences... well, there are any number of little rules and variations, but the crux of them is simply 'do not kill your opponent'. So, any spells, techniques, or abilities that are uniformly lethal are uniformly illegal and will call down the wrath of essentially all the more powerful beings of Gensokyo on your head. Those tend to have _many_ such abilities, and they will be more than willing to practice them on rulebreakers."

"Huh. Yeah. That sounds like all kinds of not-fun. Probably a good thing I'm not interested in the death and crippling thing."

"I said nothing about the second. While maiming your opponent _is_ frowned upon, it is not strictly against the rules, and not neccessarily permament either. Provided you can grow back limbs, or know someone who can fix you, at least. As well, should your opponent be such that death is a mere temporary inconvenience rather than anything final, then it is considered an exception to the rule against killing. Fairies, for example."

"Swell." Ranma grumbled. "So, any other important things I should know about?"

"Ah..." Alice took a few moments to consider. "Don't be afraid to surrender, if you're clearly in over your head, and won't lose much. Although, don't worry about making examples of enemies either, crush a few and for the most part weaklings will go out of their way not to bother you. In general... don't worry too much."

Ranma blinked at the vague, awkward, and somewhat contradictory nature of the advice.

"Hm. On a more specific note, it's usually considered polite to limit the attack's speed to the point that it's possible for your opponent to dodge them. Theoretically possible, at least. Not neccesarily in any way _likely_, maybe, but not impossible to dodge. Assuming, of course, that you can attack faster than your opponent can dodge to begin with."

"Heh. A forced degree of fairness?" Ranma mused.

"Theoretical fairness, at least. There is, after all, no limit to the _quantity_ of force allowed to be brought to bear, and saturating the entire area with attacks makes it significantly more difficult to dodge, no matter how possible it may be."

"Yeah... I've had some experience with that." Ranma admitted.

The fairy stirred slightly in her sleep, and Ranma only barely caught herself starting to reach up to adjust the way she was resting on her shoulder, cutting the motion off in an aborted twitch of fingers. She was pretty sure that Alice had somehow noticed it anyway.

"So... how much longer, do you think?" She asked, hoping to shift attention somewhat.

"Not long. Genji's shack is less than a half-kilometer more this way. Are you already tired of our conversation?"

"... It's the rain." Ranma half-lied, awkwardly. "It makes me grumpy... I'm not really the best of company when it rains."

"Oh?"

For a moment, Alice seemed ready to press the issue, then shrugged and let it go. Saving the conversation for later, perhaps.

For her part, Ranma already regretted the silence, with nothing but the aggravating noise of falling water all around. She wanted nothing less than to break it with another question, maybe about the book that Alice carried with her, which seemed to force the eye away from it somehow, or the basket of mushrooms Alice kept, or even start up some inane conversation about her dolls... but entirely aside from the questions all being rude, to some degree, it just didn't seem right to start talking again immediately after shutting the conversation down.

So she bit her tongue and walked in silence the rest of the way.

When they arrived, Genji's shack was... essentially, exactly what came to mind from the word 'shack'. A ramshackle lean-to of a building, that it was difficult to believe anyone would live in at all, much less willingly. Ranma supposed she had been spoiled by the long sojourn into civilization when she realized that was what she was thinking, and forcibly reminded herself that it was, in most respects, better than a scrap of leaky canvas that called itself a tent.

She waited patiently outside the shack as Alice entered, not particularly interested in the social element. But...

"Ah... Ranma?" Alice called out, hesitantly. "Could you... come in, please?"

xxx

The inside of the shack was much nicer than the outside. Homier... cozy, even. There were any number of knicknacks and trinkets scattered over all available surfaces, shiny baubles to draw the eye. There was a firepit off in one corner, with a heavy pot set on a grate over it, half full of something congealed and beginning to mold.

Having studied the rest of the room, Ranma reluctantly turned to the last piece of the puzzle. The bed Alice was standing by, where a very old-looking man lay wrapped in blankets and quilts. She stepped forward and hesitantly prodded him.

No response, not that she was expecting one at this point. More, rather than having any sort of give, the man's entire body moved with the prod, as one stiff lump. After another moment for consideration, Ranma lifted and peeled back an eyelid to inspect the orb beneath, foggy, glazed, and empty.

"... Yeah, this guys dead." She pronounced matter-of-factly. "Has been for at least two days, maybe more... it was cold, with all the snow, so that would have slowed down any decomposition. Which is a good thing, because walking in on... yeah, it would have been nasty."

Alice held up a hand, and Ranma's jaw obediently clicked shut.

"... Pity." She said eventually, a note of melancholy coloring her voice. "I liked Genji. He was a pleasant old man, for the most part. He told the most interesting stories, sometimes, and he never seemed disgruntled about paying a tithe to me, despite that he had been living here for longer than I had."

She rested a hand on his forehead for a moment, then shook her head.

"Was it a sudden illness...?" She wondered aloud.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes, old people just..." Ranma shook her head, not sure about why she was trying to comfort Alice. "It looks like he wasn't expecting to die, at least. He ate his dinner, left the... rice gruel sitting, probably on some low coals to keep it warm, went to bed... And then, he just didn't wake up in the morning."

There was a long moment of respectful silence.

"So... should we bury him, or something?"

"... No. Once it's obvious that Genji's dead, scavengers will start testing my defenses in order to get at his body. It... may be callous, but I can't afford the resources I would waste to just defend a moldering husk. Take anything that you wish to save, and we'll burn down the house. I believe he would prefer such an arrangement, but if it angers his ghost, then I will take the repurcussions onto myself."

"... Okay? But, uh, I don't feel right digging through a dead guy's stuff, you know..."

Alice interrupted by throwing a sack of rice at her, as she efficiently searched cupboards and drawers for anything useful or edible that would just go to waste in the coming blaze.

"Objection overruled, huh? Fine... we'll do it your way."

"Who's the dead guy?" the fairy interrupted, slowly dragging herself out of her nap. "Is he food?"

"No. Go back to sleep." Ranma snapped.

"I don't want to. Your shoulder is hard and uncomfortable. I want to sleep somewhere... _soft_."

The fairy's voice trailed off into a purr as her gaze shifted meaningfully downwards. Ranma grimaced.

"That's fine, but Suika will probably eat you when we get back."

"And _suddenly_ your shoulder feels a whole lot more comfortable than a minute ago, so I retract my previous statement!" She immediately replied, sweating nervously.

Alice ignored the banter, confirming that she'd collected everything there was to get, and began heaping blankets, clothes, towels... basically, everything she could find that was flammable, she tossed onto Genji's corpse until it was completely covered. Then she collected the lamp oil, poured some of it out over the heap, and splashed the rest over the floor and walls.

"So, uh... I'm guessing that you have a little practice... burning down houses." Ranma awkwardly mentioned.

"I used to live in Makai. You pick things up." Alice answered shortly. "Do you happen to see where his tinderbox is?"

"I'm probably going to regret this... but I have a box of matches."

Alice snatched them out of her hand.

"You might want to get back outside, now." She suggested, and Ranma beat a swift retreat, foodstuffs in hand.

A few seconds later, from outside, Ranma heard the dull 'fwumph' sort of noise that happened when oil caught alight. Alice stepped outside shortly after, brushing imaginary dust off her dress.

"Almost a good thing, that it's raining like this." She said aloud. "Not hard enough to put the fire out, when the shack collapses, but it won't spread far and it's heavy enough and the clouds are dark enough that nobody will really notice the smoke and come poking their nose where it doesn't belong."

"Am I going to get those matches back anytime soon?"

"I very much doubt it." Alice replied.

"Quite so." Another blonde cheerfully agreed.

xxx

A.N.

Blah. I keep aiming for the 5000 plus words-per-chapter mark, and I _keep falling short_. Bah. Anyway, yeah, it's another filler chapter. No awesome battle showdowns for you! I'm sure you're chafing at the bit.

The 'start off with a letter' thing seems to be working its way into a theme by now, so I decided to go with a variation. Nodoka's gotten Ranma's letter from chapter one, but not recieved the one from c2 yet. Slow postman is slow. Anyway, it gave me an opportunity to work in references to Nerima Lulz. And yeah, the PS is a little out there, but _consider who we're talking about here_. I consider it a perfectly reasonable response, in that light.

Oh, one thing to point out. Alice's house is technologically convenient, while normal gensokyo peeps is not. (She has a fridge, stove, etc). Why? BECAUSE MAGIC. May/may not go into further details later. Also, I think I really like that response. 'Why did (gaping plot hole)?' 'BECAUSE MAGIC'. Oh yeah.

Hm, what else... oh, yeah, flight. Tack on another failure, although I have to admit, I deliberated for a while on just how _spectacular_ a failure it would be. Again, may/may not eventually succeed in figuring out a way to fly, but that'll come later. I'm going to say, also, that he can't just mimic what others have done because it's not actually a martial arts technique. For Herb, it's because he's part dragon, been flying roughly since birth, he doesn't actually have the slightest idea 'how'. Saffron, same, except replace 'part dragon' with 'divine phoenix god'. _The bird people have wings_. Yeah, I think that covers just about everyone who can canonically fly.

Now, why do I feel like I've forgotten someth-_there was no Suika this chapter _D: My bad.

Anywho, on a final note, I'm working on an idea regarding Suwako. Not related to this story, just throwing this out there. Guess what the cross is with?


	5. Chapter 5

Away to Neverland

xxx

_To the lord of Jusendo, The Phoenix Eternal, King, Lord, Master, and Divine Protector of the Peoples Thereof, Hail._

_The Dragon of the Musk, long may our Empire Prosper, Bids you warm greetings, and bears important tactical news._

_The balance of power in this area has abruptly shifted. While the patrols of the wretched Amazons have remained unchanged, my hidden and loyal eyes and ears have informed me that no less than a full third of their strongest warriors have formed a contigent, led by three quarters of their Council of Elders. For a dozen centuries past, their village has never been weaker, having so many of their most powerful so far from home, on a mission I believe doomed to failure from the beginning._

_Their mission, you see, is to locate and either subdue, capture, and retrieve, or to to destroy, a single specific target. I know this target well, as I believe you do yourself. He has, after all, bested not one, but both of us. It is indeed none other than that person._

_As such, I have full confidence that not only shall the Amazons fail in their aims, but that they shall fail spectacularly, and waste a great deal of what they do not realize is precious time in their endeavors. And while normally I would have remained content with the balance of power between we three, I have recently been subjected to a vile treachery and demonstration of dishonor by none other than their foremost of elders, the Matriarch herself. Such a display cannot simply be ignored. I have since swept through my subjects and servants, and have discreetly removed those whose secret loyalties lie with the Joketsuzoku. Your own spies, which for the moment have been left untouched, can confirm this for truth... I strongly advise that you do the same, and would suggest checking an inventory of Jusendo's treasures would likely give you cause to do so. I can confirm, at the very least, that I have seen one of those eggs which your people have been known to use, in the hands of the Matriarch._

_NOW is the time to strike, to conquer. Once and for all, we can be victorious over them. I suggest an alliance between our two peoples, that we may unite against the third and divide their lands between us. By such time as word of our movements reach the seperated elders, it will already be too late, and they will return only to fight an extended battle against warriors that have fortified themselves within their own village. The three great powers of Jusenkyou will have become two._

_Further, I would bring up the possibility of uniting our peoples more permamently, with an eternal alliance of peace after the battle, to be sealed with a marriage. I would even be willing to offer myself, for my peoples side of the bargain, though I would request a mate with significant martial ability over a courtier in such a situation. On a related note, I have heard that your current Guard-Captain is exceptionally skilled._

_x_

_To Prince Herb of the Musk._

_Diplomacy be damned, you keep your FILTHY, MUD ENCRUSTED TALONS AWAY FROM KIIMA, LIZARD._

_I'll be more than happy to help you kick those Amazon punks out of my valley, but after that, YOU are next on my list. I'll BURN your dynasty of animal-raping orgies down around your ears when I reach this incarnation's full potential, you worthless whelp, and use your skin to make a scaly loincloth. Look forward to it, perversion of nature._

_-Saffron_

_P.S._

_Yeah, I remember Saotome. He's on my list too. He'll get his._

xxx

Ranma stared blankly at the new blonde, rapidly taking in details. A funny hat, again, and an elegant parasol, white with a red ribbon decoration, a purple dress...

Oh, and she simply stopped around her hips, floating in the air. Like she was standing in a hole in the ground, except the hole had been lifted without moving the ground, somehow. But even so, putting that aside...

"I'm sure that I don't have much room to speak of unusual hair colors..." She began dubiously, fully aware of her own crimson locks, "... But so far this is three for three, so I have to ask. Is _everyone_ in Gensokyo blonde?"

Instead of answering, the newcomer flicked open a folding fan and let loose a soft peal of melodic laughter, providing an eerie rendition of what Kodachi might have sounded like, if only she was even vaguely sane.

"My, my. You _are_ an interesting one." She remarked idly, as Alice very calmly and deliberately stomped on Ranma's toes with the heel of her boot. There was no real reaction, of course, but it was the thought that counted.

"Idiot!" She hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Try, at least, to be respectful... She has the advantage on us, and is capricious at the best of times."

"I prefer the term 'whimsical' myself, dear. I prefer the flavor of the word, don't you agree? Like a gentle breeze through a field of corn, where that other word calls to mind rough seas. Distasteful. Although not inaccurate, of course."

"Yeah, great. That's fantastic. You still haven't answered my question, by the way." Ranma replied dryly, and was answered with an amused chuckle.

"Hm. I'd say it's just coincidence. But I've been remiss. As it seems I will not be introduced, I must therefore introduce myself. I am Yukari of Yakumo, youkai of the Boundary. My integral power is a derivative of that long-held position, the manipulation of borders and boundaries. How do you do?"

"Eh... been better. Could do without the rain." Ranma said seriously.

Yukari seemed both amused and irritated by that response, somehow.

"Hm. You don't seem to have quite realized the scope of my power." she mused. "An explanation... or, perhaps, a demonstration? Yes... I do believe that would be in order. Allow me."

A rip tore itself in the fabric of reality, through which dropped a ludicrously massive...

"Spider!" The fairy yelped, suddenly fully awake and aware.

"Giant spider." Ranma confirmed, appraising the creature. "Big one. Thick armor, poisoned fangs, tips of its legs are like spears... but the joints are weak. I think this one recognizes me. The abandoned, cursed temple, when pops and I were on our way back to Japan? Only place I remember spiders that big."

"I think it recognizes me, too." the fairy said, glumly. "I was captured and eaten by a giant spider a while back. Of course, I was bigger, then... and it was a little smaller."

Sure enough, while the spider seemed vaguely wary of Ranma, several of its eyes were focused on the fairy on her shoulder, and caustic goop was dripping from its mandibles like drool.

"You'll like this next bit, then. See, spider meat, when properly seasoned, makes for a cheap and tasty substitute for crab. The usual problem is just that it takes a lot of spiders to get much meat... _or_ one big one."

Ranma very calmly tugged a floppy chef's hat out of her shirt and set it on her head. Then, with a grin, she flicked a meat cleaver out of her sleeve and stepped forward, menacingly. The spider retreated an equal distance.

"Ladies. If you'll excuse me a moment?"

Ranma tossed the umbrella into the air and surged into a frenzied charge, swinging the cleaver wildlyas the spider quickly decided that, however tasty fairy had been last time, sticking around was a bad idea.

Alice stared dumbly at the whole display, as the shed creaked behind her and the roof sagged slowly inwards.

"My, my. That wasn't the way I expected that to go at _all_." Yukari said, seeming somehow to be absolutely delighted by the fact. "How very _interesting_."

There was a crash from the forest nearby, and the cleaver Ranma had been holding spun gracefully through the air, thunking solidly into the wood wall just behind Alice, barely an inch from her left ear. She glowered, but didn't have much time to dwell on it before there was another crash, and Ranma had tackled the spider, the more than twice her size spider, back out of the trees and into the shack's clearing, and begun _wrestling_ with it. It wasn't long before she had snapped off a foreleg and left the limb trailing ichor into the mud as she forced the pointy, chitinous tip deep into one eye after another, ruining them and repeatedly piercing whatever passed for a brain within arachnids. Its struggles slowed, then stilled, and Ranma stabbed it a few more times before extricating herself from a many-limbed grip, a wary fairy floating as far away from the spider as was actually possible for her.

Wordlessly, Ranma jerked the cleaver free from the shack wall.

"So... you can make food come to you." She said, glancing in Yukari's general direction. "Is that it?"

"Why, of course not." Yukari replied, and plunged her hand into a smaller gap. Ranma immediately doubled over.

"K... kidney..." she rasped, breaking out into cold sweat.

"Why, so it is!" Yukari replied cheerfully. "And this...?"

"C... C-_oh_-l-lon... _liver_... GAH-_all_ b-b-bladder." she stuttered in order, falling to her knees and shivering as fingers moved in places that fingers were quite simply never intended to move.

Yukari smiled and withdrew her hand from the gap, gloves glistening with traces of blood. She took a moment to lick her fingers clean as Ranma shuddered from the aftereffects of the internal invasion.

"Are you impressed, yet?" Yukari asked, preening subtly. "This is still only the very beginning of my power."

"Y-yeah..." Ranma said, stumbling to her feet, weak-kneed and wobbling. "I... I, um, I think I... I, uh, I have to... to change, um... change my... I'll just... just be back in a second, o-okay?"

Yukari blinked slowly as Ranma stumbled away, a light flush barely visible.

"Once again... not at _all_ the expected result. How _fascinating_!"

xxx

"So, what you're saying is that you've been spying on me." Ranma said a short time later, spider carcass having been tossed into the burning remnants of the shack before they began heading back to Alice's, as she had insisted and Ranma hadn't been particularly keen on dragging it all the way back through rain and mud anyway.

"Yes." Yukari admitted immediately, without a hint of shame or guilt. "And all your friends and family members as well. Though, only since I sent Ran to inspect you and allowed you through the border. Before then, I was unaware you existed. And while I do, from time to time, look outwards to see if I can find something interesting to watch or meddle in, the world is very large. Even just Japan is very large. You shouldn't be ashamed that I hadn't ever heard of you before."

"That wasn't exactly my point." Ranma said dryly. "But whatever. It's not like I can tell when you're doing it, or in any way stop you. I'll do something petty and spiteful later, instead. In any case, if you have my mother under surveillance, then I'd like to ask if there's a way-"

"To arrange for your letters to her, and her replies to them, to be properly delivered? Done." Yukari interrupted with a smile.

Ranma frowned and tugged out a sealed envelope... somehow, whe wasn't at all surprised to discover that it wasn't the one she had left in non-space.

"How?" She asked, unsealing it and skimming the letter inside.

"Oh, no trouble at all. I just played with your gaps a little. You keep some very interesting things in your gaps, you know." The youkai cheerily answered. "I had all manner of fun with your gaps... taking things out, putting them back in again... just some innocent gap-play between friends."

"Leaving out that I only barely realized you existed at this point." Ranma countered.

"Yes, leaving that out. In any case..."

Yukari flicked her wrist and a pair of thin wooden ovals appeared in her hand. Ranma noted that, inside the wood encasing, she could almost see a purply nothingness... she studiously averted her gaze.

"Here we are. A handmade two-way letter exchange system, just for you." Yukari preened, clearly delighted in the opportunity to show off. "And I won't ask a favor in exchange... _this_ time. It works by connecting two points two each other, as do all my traveling gaps... or, more succinctly, by manipulating the boundary between those two points such that there might as well not be any distance between them at all. Just put the letter in one side, and it'll come out the other side. Easy! Of course, you'll have to put one of them in with your next letter so that your mother can send replies back, naturally."

Ranma paused in the middle of the road, a troubled look on her face.

"Wait... in one end and out the other... put it inside and push it through to mom... but..."

Her head slowly tilted several degrees to the left, eyes glazing as she chewed on the instructions. You could almost imagine a wisp of smoke pouring out of her right ear.

"Why... how would that even work?"

"Because Magic." Yukari responded immediately, and Ranma's eyes instantly cleared as she started walking again.

"Oh. Well, yeah, I guess that _does_ make sense."

"Actually, I've never come across any kind of-" Alice began, before Yukari's hand clapped gently down on her shoulder.

"It works. Because Magic." She repeated, firmly but gently, face a porcelain mask.

"Y-yes, lady Yukari." Alice said, biting her tongue.

A few minutes passed in silence as they reached and entered Alice's home.

"What's she doing here, then?" Suika asked as they entered, pointing blandly at the upper half of Yukari.

Ranma hesitated, mind spinning a mile a minute as something clicked, before speaking in a bland monotone.

"Ah... she's been watching us, somehow. She appeared and, before I knew it, she had violated me, with fingers inside, and eagerly played with my 'gaps', moving things into and out of them. There was nothing I could do to stop her."

Yukari had roughly enough time to blink before she was tackled out the door by what was suddenly roughly sixteen tons worth of burning and screaming jealous oni fury. Ranma allowed the door to swing gently shut behind them as she placed her umbrella back into the closet.

"That was, quite possibly, the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed." Alice said quietly. "With no more than a very specific retelling of the literal truth... I think they might actually end up killing each other."

"Nah. You said that's not allowed, right?"

"I said it wasn't _allowed_, yes. Not that it didn't _happen_." Alice replied dubiously. "Also, oni haven't actually been in Gensokyo for a very long time... it's questionable as to whether or not she'll decide to stick to 'the rules' in the face of what she understands to be a personal insult. Or if she even knows the current rules. And even if she does, and intended to uphold them as far as she was able, there is little I can imagine that would prompt an immediate attempt at murder regardless of them as what you implied to have happened."

"Eh, I'm sure it'll be fine." Ranma replied.

This response was punctuated by a wordless howl of bloodlust, echoed by two others, and a roaring series of explosions, itself followed by a shrill 'Yukari-sama!'. And then Ran was thrown through the door. She stood, shook herself off with a grimace, and leapt right back out through the hole, screeching.

"Okay, yeah, this might be going a little further than I planned." Ranma admitted.

xxx

The final damage tally. Suika was bleeding freely from one nostril and ear, and had cracked her kneecap. Yukari had a black eye, a broken nose, and six broken ribs. Ran was a broken, battered, bleeding mess. Two of Alice's dolls had been vaporized, and her elbow dislocated, when she had snapped and joined the fray. And the house had lost two walls in addition to the door. Fortunately, there was a great deal of wood now at hand that could be used to make repairs, although a great deal would be going to waste, as once all the toppled trees were dealt with the clearing Alice's house had been built in would have doubled in size.

Ranma didn't have so much as a hair out of place.

"Alright, this has gotten entirely out of hand, so in the interests of putting it to a stop, or at least moving the fireworks away from someplace I'll have to repair afterwards... Suika. I didn't lie. What I said was the exact, literal truth. However, it was deliberately presented in such a fashion that you would draw the worst possible interpretation of it. That was wrong of me, and I apologize for it. In reality, what she violated with her fingers were just my internal organs, and I never thought I would say that before, and the gaps she played with were my hidden-weapons-ki-pocket things. Sorry. She was spying on us, though. I would apologize to you as well, Yukari, except that I had only just admitted that I planned on doing something petty and spiteful to you for all that. Really, you should have seen it coming."

"I really should have!" She agreed, seeming all the more delighted for the fact that she hadn't.

"Uh-huh. Yeah, alright, now that that's taken care of, I really need to start patching things up here, so that once the rain stops I can make proper repairs..."

Ranma's words slowed to a stop as Suika lifted up a hand, and a moment was passed in silence before she spoke.

"You lied to me." She accused softly.

"That's... not quite it. I'm a really bad liar. What I did was-"

"You used the truth to lie to and trick me." she accused again, soft tone not shifting a bit. "Did it just not occur to you to _ask_ me to slam Yukari's face through a few trees? Did you _really_ think I would say no?"

"Eh... not really." Ranma admitted, scratching awkwardly at the base of her braid. "Of course, you probably wouldn't have fought as hard, if I hadn't-"

"Hadn't manipulated me?" Suika asked, voice still locked in that soft, even, gentle, and ever so dangerous state. "Perhaps not. And I'm sure that Yukari very thoroughly deserves everyhing she gets and worse, but even so. You have entirely overstepped your boundaries. You have to be punished for that."

Ranma hesitated, then reluctantly nodded, knowing full well that she had actually been in the wrong. She waited in silence for the verdict, wondering if Nabiki had ever been caught out and punished for anything _she'd_ pulled, then realized the comparisons she was making and mentally slapped herself.

Suika frowned for a long moment, apparently mulling it over, then nodded decisively.

"For the next week..." She declared. "I will not be ravaging you."

Ranma's eyebrows arched at the apparent self-denial before the oni continued.

"I'm not finished. I will not be ravaging you. I will not so much as _ravish_ you. No. For the next week, whenever the mood takes me, we will _make love_." She said, with all the finality of an executioners axe striking home, in spite of Ranma's clear confusion. "It will be gentle, and sweet. Soft touches, and featherlight caresses. There will be significant foreplay beforehand, and hours of quiet cuddling afterwards. During the act of intimacy_, _everything will be slow, careful, and caring. You will not be bound, and nothing will be done that might physically damage you. There will not be so much as the lightest of scratches, the tiniest of bruises, or the slightest scrape that might harm you. I will in short be treating you as the most fragile and delicate of crystal or spun glass, as though the slightest touch of a careless hand, the barest whisper of wind, might utterly shatter you. Do you understand?"

Alice really, truly, wanted to hysterically laugh at the supposed 'punishment', but somehow couldn't. It could be the way that Yukari was taking the whole proceeding with apparent perfect seriousness, or it could be the ill-fitting cold and remorseless tone that Suika had delivered the finishing question in. It could even have been the way Ranma's features had grown more pained and dejected with every further detail, or the sullen and morose nod she had answered with. Whatever the reason, the laughter had died even before reaching her throat.

"Well!" Yukari said cheerfully, deliberately drawing attention to the fact that she and Ran were suddenly in perfect physical health, as though the fight with Suika hadn't happened. "I'm certainly glad that unpleasantness is all over with."

"... _How_?" Ranma managed, in a sort of strangled whine, physically incapable of articulating anything further.

"Oh, I simply manipulated the boundary of injury and full health. Easy!"

Ranma let loose a pained noise, fingers twitching with the repressed desire to _strangle_... she took a deep, calming breath.

"I have to patch up the house... and cook dinner... so, _goodbye_."

"I'll be seeing you!" Yukari said with boundless self-assurance, waving merrily as a portal opened and engulfed herself and her servant before closing.

Ranma released the breath, took another, counted slowly to ten, and then finally set to work.

xxx

A.N.

Sometimes people just rub you the wrong way, for no real reason. That's pretty much the Yukari/Ranma relationship at this point in a nutshell.

At the heart, I decided to try to go for an aggravatingly childish personality for Yukari. So far, this means she's roughly equal parts 'Look at me! I'm impressive! Look at me and be Amazed! Look at what I can do!' and 'You are interesting! Entertain me, because I deserve it, and you should be grateful for being a source of my amusement.'... So, yeah, basically every spoiled child since the history of forever. And even considering she's supposed to be one of the oldest, most powerful youkai of Gensokyo, and her gap-hax meant that _theoretically_, she could come out on top of a no-holds-barred grudge match with God, it just fits, somehow. Really, it came down to this or 'forum troll'... so yeah, there wouldn't have been much difference.

Hey! We got a little tidbit of the Mystery Fairy's backstory in this chapter. A _really_ little tidbit... and, yeah, I think I may have plot-holed myself with the giant spider, when I've already stated that Outside of magic hotspots like Gensokyo, the world is a low-magic environment. Is there, uh, any other explanation anyone can think of for giant spiders aside from LOLMAGICS? Actually, you know what? Forget it. After writing this chapter _twice_, and scrapping the whole thing both times because I re-read it at the end and went AAAARG I HATE THIS CHAPTER SO MUCH AGBALABLAGR, I'll just stick with a possible plothole. I am beyond caring at this point.

Hm, what else can I ramble about? Ah. Well, stuff is still happening with the Nerimites. Cologne's about to get smacked with the realization that, yes, actions _do_ have consequences, especially if you left your cushy position as political leader in charge of a village of warriors to go start juggling an idiot ball in another country. I mean, I _get_ that rule of funny prevails in Ranma, but after a little while you get the feeling that either the political scene of Joketsuzoku is super-forgiving, or that 'Matriarch' is actually an inherited position that you don't really need any personal political merit to get. I mean, wow. Just wow. People (me included) like to interpret Cologne as this savvy, shrewd old lady that has every possible contigency planned out, when... she's not. She's _really_ not. She likes to pretend to be, but isn't. I mean really? The cats-tongue thing? Knowing that Ranma hates his curse? _Wow_, way to make the guy hate you _forever_. And it doesn't get better from there. She seems to keep wobbling between stuff like that and 'here, let me give you ancient secret techniques of our tribe, for no real reason'. Really? Really, old lady? I mean, sure, if the point is to convince him to join the tribe of his own volition, then I guess that wasn't the _stupidest_ thing she could have possibly done... But really, she'd already shown that she was willing to resort first to heavy-handed coercion to force him to do what she wanted. She could have easily just said 'Sure, the tribe has a technique that will make up for your sudden lack of physical strength..._ but I can only teach it to the tribe_, sorry'. Or hell, just wait for him to inevitably crack and run away, _like he was going to at the end of the arc_, and just snatch him afterwards. In conclusion, Cologne is not actually a canny, shrewd manipulator. She is _at least_ partially senile, and isn't really interested in getting him into the tribe at all, she just likes to make him jump through hoops for giggles.

Yeah, that about covers it. She's given an excuse, and now Herb and Saffron are going to wreck her shit. Not that Saffron _needs_ an excuse, as such, but that's how it is.


	6. Chapter 6

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear_ _Mother,_

_As you have no doubt noted, I have made an arrangement that will allow an exchange of our correspondence, through the artifact enclosed within this letter. It is, you see, one half of a connected set. Simply insert the letter through one part of the artifact, and it will exit through the other. I would, however, request that you not ask how this specific letter arrived, as the explanation I recieved is mind-shatteringly baffling, and I more than suspect that the woman is amusing herself at my expense._

_With respect towards your letter, I had no doubt in my mind that father would quickly lay claim to the alcohol, and am glad you received fair price for the jewel._

_In regard to Nabiki, I have, upon further reflection, concluded that she would indeed be a very poor match for a man with any sort of wealth. Assuming, of course, that the man in question intended to keep that wealth. That considered, Kasumi's rather more demure nature and inclination towards traditional femininity would indeed leave her a better match. I am confident, of course, that all of your potential selections are equally well suited, and shall leave the matter to your discretion._

_I am grateful, also, for your warning. While I would otherwise consider it unlikely for Cologne or her tribeswomen to find their way to this place, which I shall still leave unnamed for the moment in case certain of our acquaintances are so ill-mannered as to repeat their theft, I cannot deny that they have repeatedly proven to be wildly beyond my expectations in regards to their tenacity and resourcefulness in my pursuit. As well, the notion of being trailed by devil hunters is unsettling. I can not honestly say that I believe they will prove to be any significant threat against Suika, however, I have been known to be overconfident in my own abilities and, more relevantly, to mis-judge the ability of potential enemies. With knowledge that they may be coming in advance, however, I will have the luxury of not being forced into a snap-judgement. I will, however, be forced to request that you pass along more details regarding these potential devil hunters. On a related note, the thought has just struck me that Cologne may use these unknowns to her own ends. Unsettling, and worrying. I am, therefore, forced to consider this not a question of 'if' they will eventually discover my whereabouts, and a way to enter the area, but rather 'when' this will be the case._

_I regret that it will likely be much to their misfortune when they do so. You are, I am sure, familiar with tales in which oni feast upon the flesh of humanity? I can affirm that there is no exaggeration in such. Indeed, were it not for my not-inconsiderable manly charm, things with Suika could have ended far more unpleasantly than they actually did. I have served to temper this in Suika, and where I could not prevent it, directed her to those whose unexpected disappearances would be considered something of a karmic retribution, rather than simply allow her to pick and choose as she would. The point I wish to make in this is that this place is, I am afraid, home to a very great number of beings whose tastes in such matters run very similarly to Suika's. Through various reasons, mainly including the threat of significant reprisal, the humans of this place are off-limits to being preyed upon by these beings, and I am assured that at this point many such walk market roads alongside humans, quietly purchasing and selling things as any human might, neither part of the equation truly registering that the one is Predator and the other Prey. However, people from outside this land, who wander in, are under no such form of protection. You need not worry for me, as Suika's might is not inconsiderable, and I believe I would not be simple prey to take regardless of what protection that offers. However, a sudden glut of humans from outside the magical boundaries of this place, making their way inside all at once? It would not be considered an invasion. Rather, it would be looked upon as a contigent of lambs belligerently bursting into a slaughterhouse and bleating loudly to get the attention of all within. While I am quite confident in my ability to adapt to such a new situation and believe I bear enough martial skill to survive in this land even unaided, I do not believe that would be the case for, for example, Shampoo. As I believe that she was the foremost warrior of her generation in her tribe when we met, I have based my estimations upon that and have come to conclude that should the contigent of her people make their way into this dangerous land, I believe that at a generous estimate, assuming they all immediately realize the danger they face, do not split up, and work together to find a way back out, perhaps a quarter of thier number would escape. A more realistic guess would pare that number down to Cologne, and perhaps whatever elders were numbered among them. In such a situation, I would mourn and regret Shampoo's death, but understand that the circumstances made it all but inevitable. I would therefore hope that they be dissuaded from pursuing me, or at the least, fail to locate this place, not for my sake, but theirs._

_Regarding father, I would smack the man, were I there. Then, were I there, he would not have considered his current idiocy. Keep a watchful eye on him. As far as I can tell, the man usually means well. Unfortunately, his concept of what is the right thing to do, or what is best, is often significantly divorced from reality. Further, his mind and common sense seem at times to completely shut down, as his body moves automatically, without thought, to fill his belly or pursue whatever imbecilic flight of fancy has most recently crossed his mind. At such times, I have found that a stern hand and disciplining blows are the best means to keep him in line, so long as someone is there to keep his foolhardiness from being perpetrated. I can easily envision the prospect of him stealing a child from somewhere, if you do not succumb to his intent. I hope that you will be able to prevent him from making a fool of himself in such a manner, but if you cannot, then please, at the very least, be ready to violently re-instill some sense into his thick skull and force him to take it back. That is all I can ask for._

_Should you choose to divorce him, please notify me. From that point, options will become available._

_In regard to the photographs mentioned in your post-script, I find myself embarrased, but somehow not in any way surprised. My sensitivity to such things has likely been numbed through Nabiki's own activities. Please smack Akane for me, preferably with an outraged and shrill scream to go along with it, and if at all possible confiscate that photograph. I would naturally prefer not to have the details of my private life become wider known than is strictly neccessary, you understand. Try accusing her of perversion. When she freezes up, point out the nature of the photograph, that showing it off to all and sundry is a perverse act in and of itself, and that she has been doing so, and I believe her mind will shut down for a little while when the realization hits, allowing you to reclaim it unhindered._

_Suika sends her warm regards._

_Your son,_

_Ranma_

Ranma finished the letter and eyed the enclosed portal speculatively. He didn't particularly trust it, given the person who had offered it. Even so, he recognized with a sigh that he had no other options readily available and carefully slid the envelope through, and it disappeared.

Elsewhere, it re-appeared, and Yukari daintily plucked it up. Without a thought, she gapped the letter out of the envelopes confines, read it with undisguised interest, and then replaced it similarly, without damaging it in any way, or indeed, opening it. Without a further word, she tossed it through another portal to where it landed on Nodoka's desk, and returned to what she had been doing.

xxx

Suika sat up sharply in bed, blankets spilling off as her eyes darted around wildly, breathing heavily and covered in a cold sweat. Her breathing slowed as Ranma shifted in his sleep beside her with a reassuring sleepy mumble.

She flopped back down, taking in the soft and comforting warmth beside her for a few minutes, then stumbled out of bed and to the bathroom. She was alone when she dunked her head under the spigot, running warm water over her face. When she pulled back up to breathe, the mirror revealed Alice standing behind her, looking equally bedraggled and sweat-soaked.

"Nightmare." the puppeteer said somberly, the single word conveying significant depths of meaning. Not a question, but a simple statement, presented with a certain sense of 'Yes, me too. What of it?'.

Suika grunted and stepped aside, allowing Alice access to her sink, where she stripped, washed herself, calmly patted herself dry with a hand-towel, and patiently waited. Suika eventually turned her head to the side, in disgust.

"It was Ranma." She allowed. "And... I don't really want to say anything more about the details."

Alice nodded appreciatively at the gesture of good faith, mulling it over as she composed her reply.

"... I grew up in Makai." She said, eventually. "This was before I was... you know..." She waved at herself awkwardly. "Back before I became that which I am now. When I was still human. In a sense, I was fortunate, as the god-queen of that realm had taken a shine to me for some reason, and took me in as her own." Her own 'what', Alice decided was irrelevant, as she had never quite figured that one out herself. She considered stopping there, but after hesitating she pressed on. "In another sense... I was not so fortunate. Mother... tried. She tried very hard. But she doesn't truly understand humanity, except of course how to torment them. It's her job. So, when she decided to raise a young human girl..."

Alice paused, then drew a cup of water and drank it. Her hands were not trembling. She knew this was so because she had trained her hands significantly, to the point where she had near-perfect muscular control of everything between her wrists and fingernails. She also knew that another persons hands might be.

"Some varieties of higher beings come into existence fully formed, near the apex of their maturity." She said, deciding to approach things from a subtly different angle, not knowing why she was still talking or why she _wanted_, suddenly and inexplicably, too keep talking on this subject. "Young looking, to humans. They don't change much after that. They don't usually grow much. Humans are different. They are born tiny, and they grow, and grow, and mature as they age. Some Youkai are similar, with the caveat that they mature _mentally_ very swiftly indeed. And so, the minds of human children can be... flexible, for lack of a better word. Durable. Because they are not complete. Because they lack understanding, which only comes to them later. And so, when a youn child grew within a plane of hell..." Alice shook her head. "Mother was... always cheerful. Happy. She _enjoyed_ her work, and she could get... intense, at times. She was a _good_ mother. But... she didn't understand how to be a _human_ mother. And so, rather than shelter me from things a human mother would instinctively shelter her children from, she _bathed_ me in them."

A small, troubled smile crossed Alice's face before she wiped it away and drew another cup of water.

"And I _enjoyed_ them, or learned to do so, far more than I probably should have. Because Mother knew best, and Mother loved me, and so Mother was always Right, and I had not yet grown into understanding. But I remembered. And I grew into understanding. And forever after, I wished that I hadn't. And now..." Alice shrugged eloquently, sadly. "I no longer live in Makai. I studied magic more feverishly than ever, hoping that if I became a youkai, everything would be better, as a youkai's understanding displaced that of my own as a human. To an extent, it worked. I could go, now, and return to Makai, and live exactly as I had before I left, and it would not trouble me in the slightest. But... I still have the _memory_ of being human, and of having a human understanding. And it is from there that most of the nightmares spring. I still love Mother, beyond all reason, as did that happy child. But I also fear and dread her, beyond all reason. I have layered my house with thirteen unique protective wards. One to repel vermin, one to protect from rot, one that, to a degree, warns off other Youkai. And ten individual, unique wards, each specifically tuned to turn away Mother's watchful gaze, in effort to keep her from finding me."

Alice paused, and sighed.

"The worst ones... the worst ones are when I wake up and she's there, and she wants me to come home, for us to be a happy family again. And I succumb and agree, and we return to Makai. And then, when we arrive... _I'm human again_." She said, trailing down to a soft hiss of a whisper. "And that... that, I wouldn't be able to take. I'm... not that strong. I wouldn't have that fortitude, that I had as a child. I would _break_, and worst of all, Mother would never understand why it had happened."

Alice's whole body was trembling now, with conflicting emotion, and it was Suika's turn to sigh.

"Geeze... you're a wreck." She grumbled half-heartedly. "Alright. Get down here."

Without a further word, she forced the trembling dollmaker to her knees, and Alices eyes widened as the oni's strong arms wrapped gently, warmly, carefully around her. A moment passed like forever, and her arms were suddenly moving on their own, returning the unexpected embrace, as she bit her lip, feeling a tight itchiness around her eyes.

"It's all right." Suika said, softly murmuring reassuring things that she guessed Alice probably wanted to hear, not entirely sure how she had gotten herself into this situation or how to extract herself from it. She rubbed the taller girl's back, hoping that wasn't screwing up somehow. "It's okay. It's not your fault. Everything is going to be fine..."

Alice squeezed tighter, feeling a warm, gentle heat seep into her as she felt tears building at-

The door to the bathroom swung unexpectedly open, and Ranma stumbled blearily through, shirt unbuttoned and half asleep. Both of the girls froze in place as he lurched to the sink, standing right beside them and on top of Alice's nightdress as he poured a cup of water and drank it greedily, followed by a second, then washed his face. Then he stood straight and turned. And finally, finally, he saw that the room had been occupied.

"Eh... huh?" He said, still foggy from sleep and not really taking in the situation before him. "Oh. uh... oh! I-uh... I'll just go back to bed now. Sorry?"

He beat a hasty retreat from the room, leaving Alice and Suika still entangled together as before, but with the prevailing mood quite thoroughly shattered beyond any recognition.

"So... _this_ is what mortification feels like." Alice said, in a dull, shell-shocked sort of tone.

xxx

"Okay, I wanted you two here because I've had a couple more ideas to try about flying. But... they might be just a _little_ dangerous." Ranma warned, stretching slightly in the middle of the mostly-emptied storage room.

"Oh god." Alice said instantly, palming her face in resignation. "I'll get a mop."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Ranma sarcastically replied, then twitched as she actually left and returned with a mop and bucket of soapy water. "... I'm _glad_ to see you're confident in me."

"You still have a hole in you." Alice shot back. "Granted, I could probably only fit a finger in it now, rather than my whole fist, but that it's there at all proves my point."

"Yeah, yeah, sure." He replied, waving off her protests. "Anyway, first I'm going to try bastardizing the Hiryu Shoten Ha to make something like a compressed, localized, tying tornado under each foot."

"I see absolutely no way in which this course of action could go wrong." Alice lied in a flat monotone.

"Yeah, me neither." Ranma answered perfectly seriously. "Anyway, this may take a minute, focusing the spirals down that small will be a little tricky..."

He braced himself, feet shoulder-width apart, closed his eyes, and focused on molding chi. Cold and hot, together in the spiral of the technique... he had learned to do it on a large scale, to brute-force the tornado when an opponent simply refused to co-operate, but it still took time to set up and was more draining. And if they could fly, there was no point, because they would just float gently out of the area of effect. Focusing the spirals down to such a small scale was actually even trickier, as they seemed to object to being reduced, and were fighting him every step of the way. A drop of sweat rolled down his cheek from the effort.

"Almost... almost..." He mumbled under his breath. "And... got it!"

At his triumphant cry, two tiny vortexes of air appeared, beneath and surrounding his feet, and lifted him gently off the ground. This state of affairs lasted very nearly a full eyeblink before they decided, in concert, that they had had just about enough of this nonsense and catapulted him through the air, spinning, with legs whirling in ways vaguely reminiscent of helicopter rotors and all but guaranteed to have ripped them completely off of any normal person, given their speed and velocity.

Ranma landed face-first in the bucket. After a moment, he lifted himself free, blinking the suds clear and dripping.

"All right." He decided aloud. "That... that has potential. It worked... sort of... until I lifted off the ground, anyway. I just have to find a way to keep it under control _after_ that, somehow..."

"Yes, good luck with that." Alice said, focusing on the huge wet patch on her dress, left in the wake of the splash-down.

"Alright... alright. So, the other thing. Anyway, I got this idea from Ryoga's Iron Cloth trick. It's actually pretty easy to work out, even if it makes peoples eyes cross when I try to explain. What you do with that technique is to leak chi out into the general area, _not_ infuse it into the cloth, and then you... _twist_, sort of, and I'm not explaining this very well, but while your twisting what you do is sort of to _trick_ the world into thinking that the cloth is hard and rigid and sharp like a sword, and that if you swing it at something that it will cut. And if you do it right, and you're confident enough it will work, _it works_. More or less. Sooo... what I was thinking of doing, was applying that concept, knowing that it works to something less... material. I mean, if I can trick the universe into thinking that a handkerchief is a dagger, it shouldn't be _that_ much harder to convince it that gravity is optional, right?"

"Well, you have fun with that." Alice answered, turning away and opening the door. "In the meantime, I have to change my clothes. I'll be back momentarily."

"Alright. It should take me a few minutes to figure out how I'm going to make this work, anyway." Ranma agreed, sitting on the floor and beginning to think heavily.

Alice took her time. When she returned, everyone had moved to the hall in front of the door to the storage room, the fairy was on the ground in the fetal position, wild-eyed, covered with thick orange slime and whispering gibberish to herself, and Ranma and Suika were launching blasts of chi, gouts of searing flame, and miniature black holes into the room. Somehow, she found that she was not in any way surprised by this turn of events.

"Well, Saotome?" She asked pertinently, watching as he seemed to squirm, but didn't let up for a moment on the energy blasts.

"Yeeeaaaah..." He said, slowly. "About that thing I was going to try. I _might_ have accidentaly _a horror from outside the plane of reality as we understand it_." He finished at a volume she could barely hear, clearly unsatisfied with this turn of events. "Everything was going fine before that, though."

He blinked, then frowned.

"You'll want to get away from that wall."

Without questioning why, Alice moved, swiftly, as thick and ouly masses of coiled, grasping... _something_, which her mind wasn't able to readily define reached out and snatched at her, only to retreat back through the undamaged wall as Ranma blasted at it.

"Plus side, it's not breaking anything _itself_." Alice mused, in a slightly shaky tone. "So... can you get rid of it?"

"__" the fairy gibbered, and was summarily ignored for the moment by anyone.

"It _really_ doesn't like what we've been doing to it." Ranma hedged, not coming out with a clear yes or no answer. "So... probably. Eventually. Or it'll run away. I think."

"Aaaaliiiice!" A voice called from the general direction of the front door. "I came to plays!"

"Hold that thought." Alice instructed. "And don't let it get away."

"Yeah, sure." Ranma grumbled as she rushed off.

She was back in less than a minute, leading _another_ blonde with amused eyes by the wrist.

"There." She said immediately, pointing vaguely at the wall as Suika and Ranma kept up their bombardment. "I don't know _what_ it is, but it's in there, and I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to even exist. I'll give you the _entire basket_ if you kill it."

"Hey, no problems. Kirisame exterminations at your services!" The new girl answered, far too happily for the situation.

She smiled and reached up to pull a handheld bronze octagonal box of some kind out of her oversized witches hat and held it in both hands, aimed directly at the wall rather than anything inside the room. Ranma was confused at first as to why aim only seemed important to her in the vaguest of fasions, and remained so until she finished charging and called her attack.

"Magicannon: Final Spark!"

xxx

The disheveled hobo's brain seemed to pulse as he looked at the sketch held in front of him. Yeah. That was him. No mistake. He hadn't had the best life, before he'd seen that guy, but he'd figured out how to get by. Work with the people in charge, don't cross them, and he got three square meals a day and some extravagances here and there. Sure, he hadn't been allowed to leave, and he'd had to deliberately conceal the extent of his psychic abilities, for fear of them either becoming too experiment-happy or just killing him, but he had been fine with it.

And then, in a handful of hours, his life had been destroyed. He'd had to escape, or those... _things_ that had been set loose would have killed and eaten him before they were brought down. And once he'd escaped, he couldn't go back. He'd overheard a little about policy, and simply by escaping, even only to save his own life, he could never be considered anything but 'uncooperative'. He mentally shuddered at the idea, knowing what they did to those.

So he couldn't go back. But he didn't have a lot of options. Legally, he didn't exist, as his files had been manipulated to show that he'd died in a tragic accident the day he'd been taken in. Nobody would hire someone without identification, and he was in a situation where he couldn't_ get_ any.

So he didn't have any more of even the most minor extravagances. He was lucky to get a single decent meal a day now, much less three, and he lived hand to mouth. A dirty, shunned, homeless beggar. It was like a little slice of hell had been forced on him and it stuck in his craw. And he knew just who was to blame for it all.

His brain pulsed again, and he could almost _see_ a moment in time of the person sketched, and knew that he could track him down. Slowly, a smile crept across his face.

Kenshiro looked up from the paper.

"Yeah... yeah, I know this guy. So what's it worth to you?"

Cologne leered right back.

xxx

A.N.

GUESS WHO'S BACK IN THE GAME? IT'S MR SIDE CHARACTER FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER! So yeah, OC time. I can't let Ranma get off_ too_ easily, or you'll all get bored. Just because you don't _see_ it, don't assume stuff isn't happening, and all that. Still need to think further about the possible-devil-hunters, but things are coming along nicely.

TJG, you'll notice that I blatantly stole from your review. They were spectacular ideas, and after a minute or two, I worked out how to make them spectacularly explode in Ranma's face. At this point, I couldn't _not_ throw them in. Also, I've decided that 'TJG' are your initials, and have chosen to extrapolate from there to come to the conclusion that your name is actually Theodorias Johannes Grauffbergersson, and picture you as a hugely muscular man in a suit, with a massive handlebar mustach, professor type glasses, and a shiny top hat and cane. From this point on, that will be the name by which I refer to you in my head, and the picture I see when I do so. But that's neither here nor there.

To answer another review I meant to adress before: Nexus the 13th. Yes, Suika could probably use density hax to get drowned guy water to cure Ranma's curse, somehow. Or it could be cured with boundary hax, or miracle hax whenever Sanae gets there, or just plain magical bullshit hax, or any number of other things. It's still not going to happen, for two reasons. One, because Ranma is just so _used_ to cures not panning out by now that he's subconsciously given up, and wouldn't realize that these things could be used that way unless someone waved a red flag with 'Jusenkyo Cure' stamped on it in big, black letters in front of his face. This won't be happening because, Two, Suika likes having options. In bed, if you really needed that explained.

Um, because I never seemed to get around to it in the chapters, I'll explain the electricity thing here. None of the equipment, or anything, is magic, but it's all plugged up into a special converter, which transforms magical energy into pure electricity for the stuff to run off of. It only needs to be recharged about once a month, and is much more feasible in that regard than having kappa chop down trees to put in power lines everywhere, and stuff. So know you know. It works, quite literally, because magic.

Good explanations for the spider, everyone, and I'll leave it at 'one of those is probably right, unless I think of something better, and it's probably not important anyway'. For now.

So, old business dealt with, on to new.

Alice. There's one little line in the wiki that I caught on to. Alice is, or ends up being, a frequent customer of Eirin's, who often buys the nightmare-repelling butterfly dream pill things. Therea are no further details given, but this implies that she has nightmares regularly enough that dreaming of being a butterfly instead is a _really_ attractive prospect. I've already hinted at that, starting back in chapter 3, if you'll note the feverish sweat thing. So then, _why_ does Alice have nightmares? Well, look again, and you see that in her first few appearances, before PCB, or EOSD was around, which is apparently a different canon or something...? She was a human child raised in Makai, by the/a Queen of Hell. If you stop to think about it, that cannot _possibly_ be conductive to good mental health. So, since I had no patience to sift between pc-98 and windows stuff, to find out which was which, and what to facet and what to prune, I just mashed it all together and will conveniently ignore any plotholes that may arise as a result. BECAUSE MAGIC. I still think Suika came off a little wrong in the end of that scene, but everything else I try in place of it doesn't work at all. So, caught up in the moment of comforting the traumatized Alice, I guess.

Mini-cthulhu. This is the fabric of reality you're playing with, Ranma, please try not to tear it. I was going to write a bit leading up to the thing appearing, with space warping weirdly, the walls bleeding, the ceiling forming a sobbing face, the mop dancing, basically the mindfucking works. That just didn't happen, though. So you'll have to use your imagination. You're welcome, and pleasant dreams.

Marisa. The 'ze'. Fanonically, it's an important part of her character, or something, but I just hate writhing it down. 'No problem-ze'... shudder. Instead, I'll just rip off the 'Reinterpretation of Scarlet Devil' guy, and just throw extra 's's into things when she talks. You can think of it as 'ze' without the 'ze', or just that she has weird speakings, whatever you want. It works goods, yeah?

Oh, and yeah, Yukari will be reading Ranma's mail without telling him. Not always even because she's specifically interested, but just because she can. So she will.


	7. Chapter 7

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Day X, Month X, Year X_

_All is quiet in the western outpost. I am terribly homesick, and am counting the days until my yearly patrol-shift is ended. Six more weeks, and I can go home. Looking forward to it._

_I've been thinking about finding a husband, though I don't think Little Sister will approve of the idea, as she jealously covets my attention. She'll get used to it though, and she has to grow up sometime. I'm not getting any younger._

_Day X, Month X, Year X_

_There seems to be some unrest in Musk territories. Rumor has it that their prince has been boiling in anger for days over something, and has only recently calmed. With luck, things will settle down within a few days and things will return to the comfortable status quo._

_I have recently picked up a powerful craving for Little Sister's special turnip stew, as the only woman in the outpost who can cook reasonably well has just ended her yearly shift. We now take chef duties in turn, each attempt as terrible as the last. The food is still edible, barely. I'm glad I only have to suffer through it for a little while yet._

_Day X, Month X, Year X_

_Significant recent upheaval. Matriarch Ku Lon has requisitioned the best of our able-bodied warriors, and several elders, to form a war party. I suspect that she has finally tired of playing about with that outsider boy who has given her great-granddaughter such trouble. Pity. The steady stream of begrudging reports of failure always seemed to brighten my mood, though I would never say so out loud and risk offense. Unfortunately, the shuffling means that a full half of the warriors of this outpost have been recalled and replaced with green warriors and simple farmers to make up the numbers and preserve the illusion of strength. Not all of them have gone to the war party either, as many of those shuffled out of the outpost are apparently now holding positions defending the village itself, replacing the elite warriors that Ku Lon has temporarily removed from duty._

_I can agree, in theory, that the village requires the best defenses available to us, however the realization that I have suddenly shot up from one of the least powerful warriors stationed in the outpost to one of the most powerful is quite chilling. If we were attacked now, I do not believe we could win. Fortunately, while the Musk troops have been stirring more of late, they seem to be gathering towards their borders with the Phoenix Tribesmen, if our scouts are to be believed. With any luck, Ku Lon will have finished whatever she intends and returned before the reality of our current weakness is discovered._

_The hardest part will be letting Little Sister know that my relief of duty has been put on hold indefinitely. If Ku Lon returns before I would have been replaced for the year, then all well and good. If not, I am to remain stationed here until she returns. I have been promised compensation for my loyalty in such a scenario, but it is a cold comfort at best. I have spoken with an old friend, who has agreed to look in on her once in a while in my place, as Elder Sister has been called away from the village._

_Day X Month X Year X_

_Skirmishes are now occurring regularly on the Musk-Phoenix border. It seems that they are probing, testing one another's defenses, but something seems amiss, somehow out of place._

_I feel a cold sense of dread settle in my stomach when I consider the outpost's defenses, but perhaps it is simply my imagination._

_Day X Month X Year X_

_As I write this, wisps of smoke rise from the east. My nameless dread has come to pass. The Phoenix Tribesmen have sent troops to attack the eastern outpost, flying low and behind the mountains to conceal their movements. Scouts have not reported back yet, but somehow I know that the eastern outpost has been utterly destroyed. I do not expect the scouts will return._

_The Musk are on the move, advancing upon our position from outposts of their own and hidden caverns and tunnels. There are too many of them, and their training is superior. I would demand a retreat and abandon this outpost to shore up the defenses of the village proper, save that they are all, to a man, capable of advancing faster than we could flee. It is unlikely that we would make it._

_And so, I suspect that these are the last words I shall ever write, unless a miracle occurs. Looking back on my life, I have only a single regret. I wish, with all my heart, that I had just one last chance to speak to my sisters, to tell them how much they mean to me. But it's too late. I won't have a chance to tease Elder Sister for focusing on her martial training and ignoring her personal life, or to taste Little sister's cooking again, or just to hug them and cry as I say my goodbyes._

_I'm sorry, sisters. It looks like this time, I won't be coming home._

_But I'll be slaughtering every Musk I can before I go._

xxx

Ranma blinked rapidly, eyes pouring tears in an effort to counteract the searing agony that had erupted when the whole world went white. After a few seconds his vision started to clear, despite that his eyes were still throbbing angrily, and with a few more he was left with only colorful spots hazily drifting about his field of vision, rather than complete blindness. He could work with that.

He turned his head, and his jaw dropped. The room. The_ whole_ room was just... gone. Like it had never... well, no, not like it had never been. Like an obscenely overpowered blast of pure disintegration had removed it from being. The floor- gone. The walls- gone. The ceiling- gone, and the roof above had already begun to sag dangerously inwards with a dull, slow groan. A good chunk of the ground beneath the floor level was gone too, and that extended outwards in a deep furrow, stretching... at a guess, at least the length of a football field, give or take a bit. It was awe-inspiring. And horrific.

"I could have done that." He said, hesitantly, not particularly believing it himself. "I've never _tried_ to do something that big before, but I could have done it."

"Oooh, I likes hims. Scrappys. He yours?" Marisa asked.

"A houseguest." Alice corrected. "He's hers."

Marisa's gaze tracked to Suika, considered that, and pouted.

"Means. Never lets _me_ stay overs."

"That's because _you_ never repair the wreckage left in your wake, or contribute in any meaningful fashion. You just burn my house down."

"Eh... gotta points. So! Said you had mushrooms for mes?"

"In the kitchen. And on that note, I'll excuse you from fixing meals today, while you repair this."

Ranma stared. Turned deliberately to look at the swath of destruction Marisa had left behind, turned back to Alice, and stared some more.

"You're a resourceful boy, I'm sure you'll think of something." She answered callously, as two of her dolls lifted the bedraggled fairy off the ground to go and bathe. "Don't look at me like that. I've seen things like this happen before, the whole room would have had to have been purged after you'd dealt with it anyway. Now you only have to rebuild it."

Ranma sighed deeply and trudged out through the hole in the house, vaguely glad that there were still perfectly good fallen trees not too far away that he could use.

He'd braced the roof back up and almost finished the frame of the room by the time Marisa returned, half-finished with her bushel of mushrooms, floating on a broom.

"Fasts!" She said, admiringly. "Strongs too! I'm impresseds! Figured you wouldn't have half this much dones."

"I've had practice." Ranma grunted, dropping the end of the tree he'd been dragging where he wanted.

He rolled his shoulder and, with a soft noise, sheathed his arm in ki in a near perfect replication of Herb's trick. With a flick of the wrist he sectioned off a properly sized chunk from the tree, then kicked it up off the ground and leapt after it with a grunt, arm lashing out in a blur as he sliced the chunk into the correct sizes. As they reached the peak of his leap and began to fall, he dispelled the ki, and rapidly punched out at every individual new plank, sending them twisting and flying through the air to smack solidly home in their new positions. He followed them up with twin handfuls of nails, each thunking solidly home and pinning the new section of wall into place.

Ranma landed gently, and Marisa realized that she'd paused at the display, a mushroom halfway into her mouth. She finished eating it.

"_Really_ impresseds." She almost purred. "Hey, heys. Why don'cha come live with mes, 'stead of Alices?"

Ranma seriously considered the proposition, mulling over it reasonably, then answered without hesitation.

"I'll pass, thanks."

"Reallys?" She said, seeming surprised, then smiled. "Can makes it... _worths_ your whiles."

As Ranma stared, Marisa stretched languorously, eyes sultrily hooded as she displayed herself to best advantage. He blinked slowly, then his head drooped as his shoulders started to twitch, and before he could contain it he had broken out into full, uproarious laughter.

"... Feeling a little insulted, heres." Marisa said, smile cracking.

"Oh, no. No, it's nothing about you. You're pretty enough." Ranma placated. "It's just... you tried to _tempt_ me with..."

He broke out with laughter again for a moment at the thought of it.

"Haa... Let me put it this way. Most of the reason I sleep with Suika at _all_ is I've had it demonstrated repeatedly that there's no point in resisting. I'm just usually not interested in that sort of thing. It's like... like you were trying to lure a wild dog into a trap with a plate full of broccoli. Not going to work."

Marisa blinked slowly, pouted for a second, then shrugged.

"Eh... sorrys. Didn't realize you were like _thats_."

All amusement on Ranma's part immediately ceased with this new turn in the conversation, and he grew very still.

"Like... _what_, exactly?" He asked, very slowly.

"You knows. Like _thats_. Nothing _wrong_ with thats... Not got taboos bout that sort of things heres."

"Thats...! It's not...! I'm not...! That's wrong! Completely wrong!" Ranma argued frantically.

"No problems! Can come live with me anyways! Can introduce yous to-"

"NO NO NO NO NO! I do not like guys!" Ranma denied firmly, at the top of his lungs.

"... Reeeeaaaallllys?" Marisa wondered aloud, clearly dubious. "... Prove its."

Ranma started to say something, then paused, and closed his mouth. He repeated that a couple more times before frowning, crossing his arms over his chest, and finally saying something.

"I can't think of any way of doing that, which doesn't end with you being killed and eaten by Suika." He admitted. "And most of those are sketchy at best. You'll just have to take my word for it, and _you were trying to trick me into-_!" He finished in a moment of sudden realization.

"Heh. Got mes. Had to trys, though."

Ranma grunted and returned to his labor, steadfastly ignoring all of Marisa's further attempts at conversation until she got bored and wandered back inside.

He was finished shortly before dinner.

xxx

"Our financial situation is reaching dire straits."

Nabiki's ultimatum was delivered in a flat, serious tone of voice, not a trace of her typical light sarcasm to be found. It was mostly this which convinced Kasumi not to brush off the declaration.

"... Are you sure, Nabiki?"

"I'm positive. Daddy's only getting worse as time goes by. It's like right after Ranma got here, when he thought he was a girl, only he's like that all the time now. He hasn't left his room in... ugh, I don't know, and he hasn't left the house in longer. We have _no_ cash influx. None. I've patched up what I could with my own funds, but..." She shook her head. "When Ranma was here, making money was easy. Hold bets when someone tracked him down for a fight, a few pictures here and there... I would have people lining up to throw money at me. It's not that I _blame_ him for getting out of here when he had the chance, and he didn't really have a choice, but..."

"But it's hard." Kasumi finished, softly.

"... Yeah. As it is, I'm going to have to find a part-time job, if we can't get Daddy back into action. We'll both have to. I'd say Akane too, but..."

"But what?" Kasumi asked innocently.

"... Imagine Akane as a waitress." Nabiki said instead of answering directly, then waited a moment for Kasumi to nod thoughtfully before continuing. "Now, think of what happens the first time a customer says something off-color, or worse, decides to go a little further than some harmless ogling and cops a feel."

Kasumi's face went very deliberately blank.

"Yeah. It's not that I don't think she could get a job, it's just that I don't think she's mature enough to be able to keep a job long enough for it to matter. And then she'll get frustrated, and things will just turn into a terrible spiral, and it's just not worth it."

"Ah... I don't suppose we could look for help from Auntie Nodoka?"

"To see if she knows anyone who's hiring? Maybe." Nabiki allowed. "Anything more... well. She's keeping Genma in her house. I'm not sure she could afford to give out money even if she wanted to."

"I see. But... if we'll both be working, and Akane won't..." Kasumi said slowly. "She'll still want to help, somehow..."

Both sisters froze and, with dread lining their motions, turned their heads slowly to stare in the direction of the kitchen, which now seemed a terrible thing, oozing malice and hatred for all life.

"W-well... we'll just... have to be careful." Nabiki said, pupils having shrunk to pinpricks with sudden terror. "Prepare everything several days in advance, and store it in the fridge to be reheated? Just reheated? Put it on the stovetop and don't do anything to it at all until it's done? Surely?"

"No, Akane-chan." Kasumi said in a frantic tone, a haunted cast having fallen over her face as she drew her knees up to her chest and trembled, seeming to be lost in a vivid hallucination. "No, you don't have to help. Please, I like to cook. Really, I really do like to cook. You don't have to help me, I enjoy it. No, Akane-chan, that's not cooking oil, that's motor oil, why is that even in here, I don't understand. No, please step away from the stove, I can handle dinner myself, it won't be a problem."

xxx

"I'm bored." Suika said, in a grumpy tone of voice. "Is anything interesting going to happen soon?"

Ranma paused in mid-chew, then finished and swallowed, long exposure to Suika meaning he was the only one who caught the undertone to the question. If he had to put it in words... it would be 'If you say 'no', then I'll just have to _make_ something fun happen'... dangerous territory.

"Well, there are spring festivals." Alice answered, almost indulgently.

"Funs!" Marisa confirmed cheerily. "Everyone gets smashed out of their minds, sings and dances, and wakes up in beds the next morning with someone embarrasings."

"I... wouldn't have put it so _crudely_, and not everyone ends up in indiscreet dalliances... but yes, that's about the size of it."

"Alright, parties." Suika said, starting to look a little interested. "How many?"

"Ah... that's variable." Alice answered. "It depends on how long people feel like partying that year... as time drags on, more and more people decide they've had enough and the festivals just grind to a stop. It's been as many as four, and as few as one, per year as far as I know. Usually two or three."

Suika looked much less thrilled with that information.

"Lame. Geeze, underground we would have parties every other night. But, eh, we're oni. Most people would die if they tried to party like we do."

"All the booze kills their livers..." Ranma mused aloud.

"... Eh, that too, I guess." Suika hedged. "I was thinking more of them getting torn limb from limb by drunk oni, or dying of exhaustion in the orgies, though."

"... See, what's worrying is that that makes perfect sense." Ranma grumbled. Suika apparently didn't hear.

"Only, while it's called an 'orgy', it's less that, and more that a bunch of oni jump someone, and the ravaging that happens just happens to be a group effort." she continued thoughtfully. "Everyone focuses on one person, and mostly ignores everyone else involved, unless a pecker order dispute comes up."

"_Pecking_ order." Alice corrected, almost without thinking.

"Hey, I know, and meant, exactly what I said." Suika disputed. "But anyway, yeah, some of you fragile-constitution types can have problems chugging a gallon of the good stuff all at once."

The table considered that in silence for a moment, any number of interesting images floating through the mind's eye.

"Sounds like funs." Marisa decided, before anyone else could make their opinions known. "So, hows somebody get inviteds to these things, anyways?"

The discussion rapidly degenerated from there, with Ranma and Alice mostly tuning it out as best as they were able, as the other three became steadily more loud and lecherous in some kind of twisted attempt to outdo each other.

It soon grew to the point, as dinner drew to a close, that it became clear that there would be no peace in the immediate future, and so Alice invited Ranma into her workshop.

xxx

The workshop was divorced from the rest of the house by a weak ward that did very little, aside from muffle ambient noise from outside its walls, such that Alice wouldn't be disturbed in her work. Ranma didn't know this. All he knew was that there were peals of loud, bellowing laughter echoing through the house, and that the moment the door swung shut behind him they went completely silent.

"Remain as long as you wish, but touch nothing." Alice instructed, as any number of tiny dolls picked up tools and floated within easy arms reach of where Alice had seated herself.

Ranma was sorely tempted to pretend he hadn't heard the curt warning, as his attention was caught by any number of things in the large room. Stacks of wood, waiting to be carved exactingly to shape. Anatomical diagrams pasted on the walls, with crude models bolted into them nearby. A small desk, absolutely covered with papers, foremost of which was a large sheet, on which had been inked six perfectly proportioned sketches of hands, apparently once frequently used as a reference and now left to gather dust alongside a vial of ink and quill which may have been used to draw them. There were large, open boxes containing unfinished and salvaged parts of dolls, neatly sorted into arms and legs and heads and the torsos they would be fitted too, and one containing assorted bits that had clearly been considered beyond any form of salvage when tossed haphazardly in, and in one corner there was another desk, this one bedecked with swaths of cloth, and small featureless models, one of which was draped with a half-finished doll sized dress held together with pins, awaiting the finishing stitches. Then there were the shelves, on which rested books, so many musty books. Dozens, at least, all well-worn, most with things poking out from between the pages, clearly to mark points deemed of enough importance that Alice felt she needed to be able to at any time open immediately to that spot.

There were baubles as well, on the bookshelves. Carved trinkets and ornate bookends, strangely formed crystals and stoppered vials containing liquids and powders of unknown origin. These, Ranma would not have meddled with in any case, bearing enough experience with apparently innocent knicknacks to be properly wary of them.

Still, he doubted that Alice would mind much his poking through the crate of discards... Recognizing the thought as it formed, he very calmly and deliberately sat himself down instead, and turned his head away to focus on what Alice was doing.

She had braced a normally-sized wooden forearm on the desk she had sat herself before, having brushed a pile of sawdust and wooden shavings to the floor to clear a space, and was carefully affixing to it an oddly shaped chunk of wood that he didn't immediately recognize as the palm it was. Then, satisfied that it was properly joined, she took up an unshaped, small lump of wood, held out one hand for a doll to deposit a carving knife in, and began to slowly pare wood away from what was to become a knuckle-joint.

"This seems like a lot of work." He mentioned, after a further moment of watching tiny peels of wood drop to the floor.

"Just so." Alice agreed. "Forestalling your next question, I could indeed create my dolls entirely through magic, however, fashioning them through mundane means has consistently proven to be far more efficient and less taxing, in the long term. If the magic of a doll fails, for whatever reason, rather than having to mold a new form entirely from the ether and work magic to make it suit my needs, I need only collect the depleted vessel, recharge the enchantments upon it, and it works as well as it ever had while only requiring a minimum expenditure of effort on my part. Barring unforeseen circumstances that require nearly my entire stock to be rapidly refurbished and replaced, it is much more feasible."

"I'm sure." Ranma mumbled, as Alice held up the wood to the light, inspecting the rough orb and holding out the knife to the side. One of the dolls quickly took it up and replaced it with a cloth that looked very rough and scratchy, and he assumed functioned mostly like sandpaper as she began immediately rubbing the wood with it.

"I've actually found your idea of a doll the size of myself to be... well, rather relaxing, to be honest." Alice admitted. "As I typically construct them on a significantly smaller scale, the focus of their creation is in the tiniest of details, where the slightest of errors can absolutely ruin hours of labor. This larger scale has proven to be significantly more forgiving, to the point where I could almost leave it entirely to the dolls."

Alice paused to chuckle.

"Ah... but even so, I couldn't. The best I can do with them, when they aren't taking up any of my concentration, is pre-programming them, in a specific way, to follow orders. This leaves significant room for error, as I'm sure you could imagine. I'd no sooner take my eye off them than something would grab my attention, and by the time I'd turned around again the doll I'd set to polish the roughness away from a limb would have nothing remaining but sawdust. Very versatile, and yet very limited."

Ranma shrugged blandly, and Alice inspected the joint again. Finding it acceptable, she carefully socketed it into a receptacle on the palm, and began anew with another piece of wood.

xxx

A.N.

Chapter was delayed a bit with a bunch of packing, and moving, and unpacking stuff. And paperwork. Yay, college. -_-

Ah, Marisa. Such a fun character. Anyway, like I forgot to point out last chapter, the existence of something that Should Not Be in her home meant that Alice was going to insist that the entire room be purged and made anew anyway, so she saw no issue with allowing Marisa to deal with the pre-emptive demolitions. Better yet, the room was on the perimeter of the house, so there was nothing on the far side of the wall to worry about.

Stuff stuff stuff, words words words.

Can't think of anything offhand that needs specification. Oh, except that I kind of like the Middle Sister character. Shame she had to die in that attack. Then again, I only created her so that she could have a suitably dramatic death when Joketsuzoku territory was invaded, so, uh, yeah. That's the whole point. The life of a nameless background-character is fraught with peril, and all that.

Oh, yeah, last chapter. Typos typos typos. Bleh. Somehow, these things slip by. Not Ranma's semi-lolcats or the fairies gibbering, those were intentional, meant to represent the temporary SAN drain they got hit with on seeing the mini-thulu in all its glory. As for weaponizing it, given that I'm going to say that its first inclination is to kill whoever brought it in? It... _could_ be done, I guess, but not easily, and Ranma's not going to be allowed to screw around with the fundamental concepts of all existence anymore, so it's a moot point. Back to the actual typos though, given that I do this for what boils down to my own amusement and relaxation, I find myself hard pressed to care enough to go back and edit minor errors like that. If this weren't FF, and I was getting paid for this, then it would be a different story, of course.

... And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing someone, at some point, who had a paypal link for donations and stuff. Can't remember if it was in a profile here, or on their homepage somewhere, or even what their penname was, or what they were writing that I read, but that strikes me suddenly as a Pretty Good Idea. Not being paid to write these things, because I'm pretty sure that is not, strictly speaking, legal, but having you peoples throw moneys at me because I'm apparently pretty darn awesome, and by giving me stuff you would be awesome by association. The fact that I would feel obligated, then, to beat my face into a wall if an accidental typo slipped in, or the whole having extra monies to buy foods with thing, would be completely incidental. But on the other hand, while I've used PP to buy internet stuffs occasionally... very occasionally... I'm not entirely sure if I want to bother with the whole hassle that it would bring. Bah.


	8. Chapter 8

Away to Neverland

xxx

_To my superiors,_

_I have penned this brief note that I might request a budget increase for my department of the Institute for the Advancement of Humanity, and in so doing make my own private research official._

_I am aware that the focus of study is, as it has always been, to extract and harvest everything of use to humanity from the physiological natures of paranormal and supernatural entities, and that questions into non-human culture and psychology are considered pointless and discouraged. I find myself, nonetheless, fascinated by these subjects, and feel that a better understanding of them can only be beneficial for mankind as a whole._

_For example, I have theorized that the vast majority of animalistic archetypes exhibit significant traits representative of the beasts they seem to have evolved from. Those similar to wolves, for example, seem to bear an instinctual tendency to gather into tightly knit packs or hunting groups, and tend towards a primal, yet spiritual, mindset that bears fascinating similarities to Native American culture. While I have not yet had significant time or means to study other such paranormals, what other results I have seem to bear this theory out, as those similar to rabbits seem more comfortable in smaller, enclosed spaces, calling burrows to mind, and have proven to have little or nothing in the way of sexual inhibitions. I have yet to conduct tests on those of an ursine, insectile, or arachnoid nature, as the multiple studies involving the rabbits bore out such interesting data that they warranted regular repetition._

_Still more fascinating are others, such as, for example, the beings that historical myths name 'vampires'. Tellings of these creatures strengths and weaknesses and paranormal characteristics seem inconsistent because they are inconsistent. While a given vampire may be vulnerable to religious imagery and holy water, another might have no such weakness, perhaps even visit places of worship regularly, while bearing a powerful allergic reaction of sorts to garlic. A stake in the heart may kill one vampire, while another may only be destroyed through decapitation, and a third might only be defeated by tricking it into looking into a mirror. Indeed, what the stories show of vampiric characteristics are only the most common such. Such unusual weak points as the peelings of citrus fruits, sea water, saliva, used coffee grounds, the color puce, and improperly brewed Earl Grey tea are apparently not impossible. Vampiric culture naturally reflects this eclectic and motley assortment of potential weaknesses, and can become quite complicated. In point of fact, this is the reason that most vampires tend to live well away from any others of their kind: Not out of an instinctual need to claim a particular hunting territory, but simply because they are aware of the complicated nature of vampiric relationships. For example, if one vampire is to dine at the abode of another, then both must be fully aware of the weaknesses of the other party, so as not to offer accidental insult or threat, as there are noted occasions where an error has caused a polite nightcap to be mistaken for an attempted assassination, and the vampires in question ended up fighting to the death. However, the knowledge that their weaknesses are known leaves most vampires uneasy, to a similar degree as a schoolgirl discovering that her blind date is a mass of writhing tentacles in a tuxedo, and that she has no polite means to retreat, aha. Everything about vampiric interaction can be quite delicate. As such, they tend to deliberately shun contact with others of their kind, instead associating entirely with other paranormals, who do not typically require the intense and reciprocal demonstration of trust that another of their kind would. Long term interaction between two vampires is rare, and even in the exceptionally rare case that a pair mate, rather than choosing paramours from other species, they do not live in the same abode. To do so would require either that both parties trust each other implicitly, far and beyond the simple wary politeness of other meetings, or that they go mad knowing that at all hours of the day, there is a being within their lair that knows each and every one of their weaknesses, and further, knows where and when they relax their guard entirely to sleep, and could at any moment end their life with negligible effort._

_It is a truly fascinating psychological study. I believe that Oni, from what little information I have gathered, will prove to be more so. The most interesting tidbit I have deduced is that they quite simply have no real understanding of the concept of rape. Their culture, you see, is geared heavily towards the virtue of strength. What Oni have, they have generally taken away from those weaker than them, and will only keep until a stronger Oni takes it away from them, with the exception of if a particular Oni happens to be in a generous mood and gives something away to one weaker than itself. Sexual matters are no different in this than anything else. If a stronger Oni wishes something of a weaker Oni, whether it be a trinket, food, an interesting slave, to slake their lusts with the use of their body, or simply their life, then they will simply take it away, by force if the other party objects strongly enough to put up a fight. More interesting is the fact that weaker Oni honestly bear no ill will to their stronger brethren over this, simply viewing it as how the world has always and will always work, the right of the strong and the duty of the weak. By extension of this worldview, Oni are quite fuzzy on other concepts, such as 'commerce' and 'theft'. There is no exchange of goods or services between Oni, and no Oni would even begin to consider taking something from another Oni unless they were confident in that they were stronger than their victim. Oni seem, however, to be significantly more lax with other species then they would be with other Oni. I look forward to studying the details of such interactions._

_-Smith XVI_

_From the offices of Mr. White_

_Your request for additional funding has been duly reviewed, and we regret to inform you that it has been denied._

_Further, we would like to inform you that, on several occasions, you have been issued penalties for exploring such areas of study. They lead to contradictions with the official policy line, that all paranormal entities are no more than beasts that have learned to speak and taken humanoid form as a means of protective camoflauge. This leads to employees questioning themselves and the actions of the Institute, and in many cases requires Contract Termination._

_You are a smart man, Smith. Perhaps, too smart. While you have never had issues of morality, at last count no less than twenty seven employees have taken actions that could only be replied to with Termination, all entirely motivated by having come into contact with your unique studies. The losses you have incurred have, unfortunately, begun to significantly outweigh the gains you have achieved in our service._

_Your replacement, Smith XVII, is currently en route, and will arrive shortly after the Institute's cleaners have finished their assignment. Rest easily. Your long years of dedicated service have not been forgotten. Following your tragic accident, the Institute will be covering all costs of your funeral, and all payments will be made promptly to the beneficiaries of your insurance plan._

_Finally, because I don't believe I'll ever get a better chance to say this, your wife is cheating on you. With me. So are your mistresses. And I've slept with your lovely young daughter a few times as well, although I'm afraid so has half Japan. Like father, like daughter, eh? 'Regular Repetition' indeed, you really did try out everything you could, didn't you?_

xxx

"So... could you repeat that again?" Ranma said dubiously, not entirely sure that he had heard properly.

"Like I said." Suika explained patiently. "I'm going to disperse myself all over Gensokyo and fiddle around with the population density, so that there are a lot more festivals than normal, and people party harder. Since you're going to want something to do while I'm busy, I want you to wander around Gensokyo. Explore, mingle a bit, meet people. Play around, that sort of thing. Have fun. Have _Alice_, if you want, but make sure to get my approval for anyone else, okay?" She teased.

"... I wouldn't want to step on your toes, there." Ranma replied, deadpan.

"Eh, sadly, nothing like what you suspect happened. It really wasn't what it looked like, and more's the pity."

"... Shame." He decided, without a hint of sarcasm. It really was a little disappointing. If she was focused on someone else, then it would free up a good bit of time for him to focus on other things.

...

_Unless_ she decided she wanted to play with both of them at once. Which, he admitted to himself with a trace of vague guilt, might be kind of interesting, but there were still any number of things he'd rather be doing.

"Okay... I'm pretty clear on the 'what' and the 'how', I guess. But... why?"

Suika mulled over the question for a long minute, then shrugged and made her counter-argument.

"Why _not_?"

Ranma found himself lacking an answer, and sighed.

"... So, are we starting right away?" He asked, resigning himself to his fate.

"Well, I'm heading out after lunch, if that's what you mean. Your bit is really down to you. Stick around here if you want, head off if you want. Your call."

They were interrupted as the fairy floated between them, bedraggled and covered in... Ranma took a cautious sniff, and decided he'd been happier not knowing. She continued on to the bathroom where, by the sound of it, she got the sink running and sat under the pouring spigot for a while, using it as a makeshift shower.

"Marisa had a _good_ time last night." Suika said cheerfully, as though he had needed the clarification. "And, you know, it takes a _lot_ less to get a fairy smashed than you might think."

xxx

"So that's the situation." He said later, pouring tea for himself and Alice. "I'll be leaving this afternoon, and thank you for your hospitality."

Alice considered this as she sipped. Many questions sprang to mind, mostly variations of 'where will you go' and 'what will you do'. She pushed them all aside.

"Ah. As she demands, is it?"

"Not in so many words." Ranma replied, and shrugged. "But I've had a bit of practice in working out when someone's suggestions aren't suggestions at all... I just usually ignore them."

"Your loyalty is to be commended." She answered, dryly.

A handful of minutes passed in silence as they drank tea. As Alice finished, she rose to her feet.

"Wait here a moment." She instructed, leaving the room as a doll collected her cup and saucer and carried them to be washed. She returned with a bundle of things under one arm. Ranma immediately recognized half of them-the umbrella and one of Alice's maps. The other two items he wasn't familiar with, something made of cloth and a stick.

Alice shook out the cloth, revealing it to be a hooded overcoat of some sort.

"This should be useful for your particular troubles. There's a small magic stitched into it, a charm to endure the elements. Even the harshest of downpours should find it difficult to make their way through this coat, even without an umbrella."

Ranma instantly decided that this was the best gift he'd ever been given.

"And the stick?" He asked curiously, wondering what was special about it. Maybe it would turn into a sword on command, or maybe it would shoot gouts of flame when activated, or maybe...

"This? It's just my old walking stick." Alice replied, practically. "It won't really be much use against a youkai of any significant power, if you end up in a serious fight with one, but most lesser pests will leave you alone if you beat them about the head and shoulders with a good, sturdy stick. Since I crafted it, it should be a little harder to break than anything you could just pick up off the ground, of course."

"Of course." Ranma replied, concealing his disappointment and feeling like a fool for getting his hopes up.

Shrugging, he pulled on the coat and went to stand in front of a mirror, tilting his head sideways as he considered his reflection, walking stick nestled in the crook of one arm.

"... I look like an apprentice wizard from one of Nabiki's comics." He realized suddenly. With a chuckle, he flipped the hood up, then stamped the butt of the walking stick into the floor as he made a menacing face and crooked his fingers out at the reflection. Then he snorted and started chuckling again. "Oh yeah. Just like."

"On that note..." Alice interrupted idly. "I don't suppose you've ever considered studying magic? I'm sure I still have a number of beginner texts cluttering up a closet somewhere."

"Eh... thanks, but I'll pass." Ranma decided. "For now, I'll stick with martial arts and chi. It's what I'm good at, and I don't really think I'm patient enough to learn an entirely new way of doing things. On top of that, I'd probably get rusty in the meantime. It's not that I don't appreciate the offer, but..."

"Ah, I understand. Do let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, please head up to my workshop. I'd like to show you how my project is going before you leave."

He shrugged and went. Alice didn't follow immediately, giving him a few moments alone in the room... he shuddered involuntarily as his eyes fell on the half-finished oversized doll. Rather than take the route she had with all her smaller dolls, where the torso was a single immobile lump, Alice had decided to go all out with the detail, carving exactingly to size wooden ribs and vertebrae, which would be covered with interlocking sliding plates that would, she had determined, allow almost the same range of mobility as an average human's body.

That, however, was the finished product. What was currently on display was a pair of arms and a head with empty eye-sockets, attached to an empty ribcage with most of a spine trailing beneath. It was an instinctual response. He knew full well what he was looking at, but his subconscious was still saying _'horribly mutilated corpse, it's time to go'_. He turned his gaze aside and focused instead on a small row of dolls awaiting either their first enchantment or reactivation, some clothed fully, and others... not. He wasn't sure why it was that Alice insisted on crafting her dolls to be fully anatomically correct, but he didn't intend to pry either, having decided that the answer couldn't possibly be worth knowing if it was anything like his guesses.

And then a moment of morbid curiousity hit him and, not really sure why he was doing this himself, he reached out with one hand and allowed a fingertip to light up with ki. He placed it gently against the forehead of one of the dolls, and there was a slight... _pouring_ sensation, for lack of a better word, as the energy traveled from him into the doll. It leveled off, and he drew his finger away and watched patiently.

Absolutely nothing happened.

He had just enough time to shrug before the door started to open and he hastily arranged himself into an innocent manner, prepared to protest that, no, of _course_ he hadn't touched any of Alice's things if it proved neccessary. It didn't, as she bustled through, carrying a small jar of glass eyeballs.

"Blue or green?" She asked immediately. When Ranma just blinked, she sighed. "Eyes. Do you think she should have blue or green eyes?"

"... Blue." He decided after a moment, and Alice nodded, drawing out a few glass orbs and inspecting them before she carefully began to place a pair into the sockets.

"I'm trying to think of a name for her, as a unique doll. I've had vague ideas of making one on an even larger scale, if I could think of how to move and assemble the vast quantities of lumber it would require, and I would easily be able to name it. Either Gigas or Goliath, I think. This doll, however... a name for this doll eludes me."

Ranma shrugged, but allowed himself to be drawn into the conversation. Mulling it over, he thought of what names he knew, and realized he didn't know many names. Most of them were that of people he'd met, and didn't seem to fit. Hm...

"Valkyrie." He decided eventually, having just picked a word he'd heard in one or another of the classes he hadn't ended sleeping through. It sounded right, anyway. Apparently, Alice thought so as well, because she paused her work to consider it.

"The Norse warrior-goddesses who collect the souls of those fallen in battle, escorting them to the paradise of Valhalla, where they fight to the death all day, the winners drink and feast all night, and all are restored the next morning to fight anew, in preparation for the battle of Ragnarok, which heralds the end of the world." She mused. "Valkyrie Doll... yes. Yes, I can see that. I'll have to make a few minor aesthetic adjustments, of course..." She mumbled, eying the doll critically.

Ranma just shrugged humbly, completely unwilling now to admit that he'd essentially just drawn the name out of a hat.

The idle chat continued for a while, and then Ranma glanced out a window and realized that it was already past noon and he needed to collect the fairy and be leaving. He made his excuses and Alice walked them to the front door to see them off.

She closed the door behind herself and sighed, leaning back into it. Her house... it seemed so empty now. Almost painfully silent, as dolls floated through the air, attending to their scheduled and micromanaged tasks. She stood up and began to slowly walk through the house, stopping in the dining room.

A half-full cup of cold tea sat quietly on the table, its simple presence seeming, all of a sudden, to mock the magician. With a wordless snarl, she snatched up both it and the saucer it rested on and hurled them into a wall, where they shattered into fragments and tea sprayed outwards from the impact.

The pointless destruction didn't make her feel better, only vaguely guilty as dolls floated into the room, prying shards of china free from the wall and floor and soaking up the spilled liquid with a rag.

Alice turned and stalked back out of the room, regaining a hold on her temper as she went, reminding herself that there was no point to smashing up her things, wondering to herself just _why_ people insisted on being so very frustrating...

She made her way into the workshop, and carefully tugged at a specific book on a specific bookcase. Nearby, a section of wall slid soundlessly open to reveal a hidden room. It was here that she kept her most valuable trinkets, her more expensive wines... and her secret collection.

One wall was filled with an arranged display of very special dolls, each representing, in miniature and most perfect of detail, everyone she had ever known or met, from Mother on, dressed in their individual habitual fashion.

Three new places had recently been added to the display and, after carefully pouring herself a small glass of wine, Alice began to carefully sketch and make notes of her visitors, from memory.

xxx

A.N.

Fast chapter is Fast. You're welcome.

Just finally got SWR working properly and _holy crap, Alice_. Wow. Just, wow. Slammed through her entire story (on Easy Modo, yeah) without using up a single life. Which may not sound like much, but in those fighters I'm used to losing all my lives and a continue or two just to get to the final boss. Just wow. Didn't even have to bother with spellcards much, after I figured out that you can remote-trigger the dolls she throws out by shooting with another doll, and the bullets triangulate in on the enemies position. I mean, maybe that's not as valid a technique on higher difficulties, but _holy crap_. Alice _wrecks peoples faces off_. Now, if only I could get the patches to take properly so that the dialogue is in something I can read instead of those crazy moon-runes, that would be awesome.

Anyway, yeah, the Institute. Generally not nice people, some less pleasant than others. Since I already had 'Smith' be an obvious codename, I went ahead and went the extra bit to make it an inherited codename, which gets passed along after the previous Smith either retires or 'has their Contract Terminated'. Also, while I'm on the topic of the letter, yeah, let's talk about the letters. At first it was just a gimmick to introduce the first couple of chapters. I, myself, am surprised at how long it's run, but I'm enjoying it, and I'm slowly branching it out to 'anything someone in the story-world has written down, somewhere, at some point'. Flexible, leaves me a lot of room to maneuver. Of course, this means that it's becoming steadily more likely at some point I'll start a chapter with someone's tax-return just to mess with your heads and force you to try to figure out whether or not it's actually relevant to the story. Probably not. _But what if it is?_ Oh, jeez, I'm thinking of all kinds of mindgames I can play with your tasty, tasty brains already. I'll hold them off for as long as possible.

No complaints about Suika's master-plan, 'kay? That's seriously exactly what she did for IaMP, and it worked. I have to throw a nod towards canon every now and then, you know. Also, I would like to point out that Suika's big issue has never been 'nobody can have you but me', more 'nobody can have you _unless I say so_'. Oni aren't _quite_ clear on the concept of monogamy, as I think I've pointed out before.

Alice's gifts: Boring, but Practical. And seriously, Alice wasn't going to be throwing around crazy awesome magic stuffs anyway. She might be able to do a lot of magic things, but her focus and specialty is Dolls, just like Patchy's is _elementalism_, and Marisa's is 'your house asplode'. Sure, they can all _do_ other things, but it's going to take a lot of time and effort, intensive research, and it's not going to come without a cost no matter how much they like someone.

Also, I'm going to take a moment to assure you that I'm not going to fall into the fanon Alice trap of 'Lonely... so lonely... angst...' any more than 'OMG, I lovelovelovelovelovelovelove Marisa _sooooo_ much!'. Yeah, neither of those are happening. I have mentioned, though, that Alice has Issues. So yeah, she doesn't really like to be alone, but she doesn't really like people either, hm. And she considers Marisa more of a usually tolerable irritation than any kind of romantic interest. 'If I knew anyone else, I wouldn't have asked you to come' ring any bells? Hm... I'll leave it at that rather than go deeper into dissecting character analyses.

Anywho, still thinking about whether I want those 'devil hunters' from earlier to be competent and powerful hunters of evil or 'LOLover-their-heads' Sailor Moon-esque magical girls. I'll probably waffle on the issue right up until I actually use them in-story in more than a passing 'oh, yeah, these people exist' reference sort of way.

But on to important stuffs. Your thoughts. Feed them to me.

Edit: Bah, doesn't like strikethroughs. Bits of the A.N. removed, to make it make sense: 'setting things on fire' 'drowning things' 'blasting things with lighting and ginormous rocks' 'cutting them apart with sawblades'. This was right before 'elementalism', by the way, and even fiddling around with the html button didn't make it work, _so why do they even have it, arrgh_, no, no, it's cool.

Throw reviews at me anyway.


	9. Chapter 9

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Journal note XX-XX-XX_

_Hoo... things're heating up over in china. Sources are telling me that Musk and Phoenix have teamed up against Ko-chan's people. Well, it's not like it's the first time two sides of a conflict have ganged up on a third, and I really can't see how this isn't Ko-chan's fault. That's the sad thing about humans- get past a certain age, and it's like their brains have started to rot inside their heads._

_Ah, that's none of my concern, though. Well, except to remind me that I've been using this identity for a lot longer than I really should have. It's been... what, around three hundred years, maybe? Bah. I guess I could probably squeeze another decade or three out of it... maybe more. It's not like the people of Nerima district have a habit of catching on to things. Still... things are getting stale here. Boring. Oh, stuff still happens, of course, but it's getting to be dull and predictable, what with the boy and Ko-chan gone. The Kuno lad and his sister, charming though their inanities and insanities may be, simply can't keep up. Things have settled into a sort of routine, these days... why, the district seems almost normal now, no matter how far out of my way I might go to spice things up. Bah._

_I suppose it's about time, then, that I reinvent myself. It will be a bit of a hardship to let this identity go, of course. I've grown attached to it, having done significantly more with it than any other of my identities that I can think of offhand. Why, I invented an entire school of martial arts just to begin with, and I've meddled in so very many people's lives. Ah... it's always painful to leave behind an identity where you've made a real impact._

_..._

_Now that I think on it, maybe I don't need to leave it ALL behind. Didn't the boy have his mother mention that he wouldn't mind a word with me? Ufufufu... I'll have to take that into account. Hm. Yes, that settles it. I'll definitely have to be female this time, if only to play around with the boy's head. He already knows my nature, so it won't be a problem._

xxx

He could almost feel Suika's amusement through the thin, barely noticeable, but pervasive mist that she had turned into and spread herself across Gensokyo as. He ignored it as he studied the map and looked around himself.

"... Bamboo forest of the Lost. Not just a fancy name, huh?" Ranma grumbled. "Doesn't seem like there's anything interesting here, though... if I could just figure out which way is out..."

He sighed in disgust as the fairy floated down, shaking her head in a negative gesture. The bamboo was apparently high enough that she couldn't clear the canopy and get a good look at the area while he was still on the ground. For a moment, he considered climbing up one of the poles, to give her a little more clearance... but on second thought, they looked fairly skinny. It was easy to imagine trying to climb one, only for it to snap only a little way up and send him crashing back down to the ground, pointlessly.

"So." He said, addressing a thin wisp of Suika. "I don't suppose you could just _tell_ me which way I should be going? Hm?"

He didn't recieve an answer, but somehow got a sense of smug amusement from the way the wisp was drifting.

"Yeah, that's about what I thought." He admitted. "You'll be no help at all. Feh."

Grumbling, Ranma stowed the map away and started walking again, trying fruitlessly to navigate the seemingly endless labyrinth of intricately twisted pathways.

"So... fairy." He began, after a few hours of silence had taken their toll. "Now that I think about it, I don't know much about you, do I?"

"At the very least, thank you for not using that horrible nickname. In any case, if it's to pass the time, I guess I can tell you a little." She decided. "My name is-"

The conversation, such as it was, was interrupted by a shrill cry from nearby, and Ranma immediately rushed in its direction without a thought, leaving the fairy to sigh as she floated a ways behind him.

In a small clearing up ahead, two youkai were looming menacingly over a small child.

"Sweet and tender... all alone?" the first mused aloud.

"Little child... sweet child... where are your parents?" The second asked. "Are you... alone? Does nobody know where you are?"

The child began sobbing quietly in lieu of an answer, telling the youkai all they needed to know. Predatory smiles widened.

"Such a brave little morsel..." the first cooed.

"All alone in these big, scary woods... nobody to know you are missing... nobody to seek out a lost little lamb..."

"Hiya." Ranma interjected before the conversation could go any further, having walked up behind and between the youkai and draped his arms almost companionably over their shoulders, stick still held loosely in one hand. "Now, I'm pretty sure that killing and eating kids... Y'know, there's some kind of rule about that. Mainly, don't. So, yeah... I'm thinking, _obviously_, you two ladies here were about to offer to lead the way out of here, am I right?"

There were two ways this could go now, Ranma knew, as the youkai's eyes met. The first, peaceful way was that they would recognize that they'd been caught out and pretend that, yes, walking the poor kid home was what they'd intended all along.

Judging by the way that, as one, the two had just tried to start to twist into a clawing, rending lunge, though, Ranma was forced to assume they'd decided on doing things the stupid way. He immediately countered by slipping his arms down and to the side, flicking one end of the stick up to catch hold of it with his other hand, and bending over backwards with the two surprised youkai caught in the hold. Their heads slammed solidly into the ground, with a very satisfying 'thunk' noise.

He released them, letting them roll aside as he heaved himself up to his feet and rolled one of his shoulders.

"Need any help down there?" came a rough call from above.

Ranma looked up, taking in the details of the newcomer that was just sitting there, in midair, even as he thrust the tip of his stick out behind him and lashed out to the side with an elbow, catching each of the youkai directly in the forehead. White hair this time, and absurdly long to boot. Red pants, bedecked randomly with some kind of patches that looked almost like sealing charms, held up with suspenders over what had probably once been a very nice white shirt, but was now a sort of greyish-brown from having been heavily peppered with ash and loose dirt, to the point where no amount of washing would restore it fully.

"... Nah, I got this." He decided, stepping to the side to allow another ill-thought out attack to pass him by, responding to it with a firm kick from behind to a place he probably wouldn't have targeted if he didn't know full well what these two would have done with the kid had nobody passed by, leaving her wheezing and clutching herself as she fell to her knees for a moment. Then he leaned backwards and thrust out with the stick, aborting the other's sneak attack with a jab right to the diaphragm.

"Suit yourself." White-hair answered, seeming to almost recline in midair, if such a thing were possible, as she fished out a crumpled carton of cigarettes and lit one with a flame that sprang from the tip of her finger.

In the time it took for it to shrink down to just an ember, things had progressed from a completely one-sided sort-of fight to the point where one of the youkai was suspended upside down between two bamboo poles by an artificial web of ropes and knots, and Ranma was kneeling on the back of the second, arm twisted up painfully behind her back, as the munchkin stared in awe of the display.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." The pinned youkai whimpered, then yelped as Ranma nudged the arm slightly. "I'll never do it again!"

"Yeah, I'll bet." Ranma grunted, but stood up anyway, and delivered a sharp boot to the side. "Go on. Get lost, punk."

The freed youkai scrambled eagerly away, not sparing a second thought or backward glance for her trapped companion, who watched sullenly as she left.

"Hey. You all right there, kid?" Ranma asked, brushing dust off of Alice's coat.

"Oh! Um, y-yes, sir." The child stuttered, wide, watery eyes and piping voice giving no real indication as to whether it was male or female. The child scuffed a toe awkwardly into the ground before continuing. "Um... are you... a superhero? Like the ones in the picture-stories from outside?"

Ranma was instantly ready to deny the claim, before sparkling eyes settled on him and he hesitated, corner of his mouth twitching slightly.

"Uh, um..." The waif stammered cutely. "You... you don't have to tell me, um, if you don't want to. If you have to keep your secret identity, then..."

The portion of Ranma's brain that was responsible for common sense might well have sighed and palmed its face, if that were possible, as it shut down and he made his decision.

"THAT'S RIGHT!" He yelled, in exaggerated jubilation, giving a flashy thumbs-up and maneuvering his body through a series of ridiculous sentai poses, twirling his stick like a baton. "For I am...! MUSCLE RANGER, BLAAAAACK! The MASKED MAN OF MYSTERY who strikes FEAR into the hearts of EVILDOERS EVERYWHERE!"

The remaining youkai looked very much like it wanted to swallow it's tongue in mortification at this point, as the child clapped happily. And then paused, as a niggling detail pointed itself out helpfully.

"But you aren't wearing a mask...?"

"It's in the wash today!" Ranma lied without skipping a beat, or even realizing he had done so until after the fact, leaving him scrambling for a follow up. "But FEAR NOT! I, MUSCLE KAMEN, BLUE do not fear the EXPOSURE of my SECRET IDENTITY! My FISTS OF BLUNT TRAUMA JUSTICE will leave any FIENDISH NE'ER-DO-WELLS who think to take ADVANTAGE of such WISHING THEY HADN'T!"

"... But wasn't your name...?"

"DETAILS! COME, CHILD! Let us be GONE from here, that you may return safely to your home!"

A long moment passed in which nobody budged an inch from their positions, and Ranma coughed embarassedly into one fist.

"Unfortunately, the Green Kamen Ranger's sense of direction has temporarily become a little twisted around upon itself, for the moment." He muttered in a theatrical aside.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll lead you crazy kids out, all right." the floating woman said, grinding out the stub of one cigarette into her palm before flicking it away.

"Are you his sidekick?" the child asked curiously.

"I'm just a yakitori vendor." She immediately denied, floating a little bit ahead of them.

Much to Ranma's eternal consternation, it was barely fifteen minutes, if that, before they had reached the edge of the bamboo forest, just a little away from what he assumed was the human village marked on his map. The child squealed in delight at the sight.

"You should be fine from here, but don't run off alone again, okay?" Ranma said. "I might not be there to save you, next time."

"I'll remember!" the child affirmed, in the sort of cheery tone that suggested that the odds were heavily against it, and ran off.

"... So. 'Muscle Ranger', huh?" The woman sardonically mused aloud, as the fairy floated out of the bamboo behind them and perched on Ranma's shoulder.

"Hey. Hey, now, miss yakitori vendor. Like you've really never done something stupid to keep a kid amused?"

She seemed to contemplate this question deeply for a moment before answering.

"No. No I haven't. Not ever." She said, seriously. "Anyway, I see you aren't in a rush to get to the village. Heading to Eientei instead?"

"I'm not heading anywhere in particular, actually." He said, choosing not to wonder about the place she'd brought up, which he was fairly sure he hadn't seen on his map.

"Oh. Wandering martial artist sort of thing?"

"Something like that." He demurred.

She seemed to consider that for a moment.

"There's a big mansion on the north side of the lake." She began, tone suggesting that this was secondhand information right from the get-go. "Gatekeeper there's supposed to be pretty good. Guess you could go over there and pick a fight?"

"Most martial artists prefer the term 'challenge'... but in my experience it mostly works out the same." He admitted. "And I don't really see why not... it's not as though I have anything else to follow up on right now."

"All right then. I'll lead you through the forest, but on foot it'll be late into the night before you get to the other side. I guess you can't fly?"

Ranma grunted in disgust, face turned to the side, his latest attempts having proven no more effective than any before.

"Yeah, thought not. I'll have to put you up for the night." She muttered, floating a bit ahead of him. "Only one bed, though."

"That'll be fine." Ranma replied easily.

A few hours later, he was reconsidering the statement.

"You know... when you said 'there's only one bed', I sort of assumed that you meant... I don't know, that you'd have me sleep in a chair, or a patch of floor, or something."

"Don't have any chairs." She countered, carefully folding her pants and putting them away. "And the floor's covered in rusty bits of metal and blood, still, from when I managed to get ahold of Kaguya not long ago. Haven't had the heart to really clean it up, yet."

"_I noticed that..._" He muttered in a grim aside. "And I think I'll spare my sanity of wondering why... well, why _anything_ along those lines. In any case, mistaken assumptions aside, I was pretty sure you weren't inviting me to _share_."

"That's what you get for assuming things. Anyway, kids these days... so prudish. Don't worry, my intentions aren't at all sexual in nature..."

She paused, considering for a moment.

"Well, unless you _want_ to." She allowed, blandly, in the same tone of vague disinterest she might say 'if you're hungry, there's food over there'.

"... Miss yakitori vendor, you're very attractive, but I'm sort of in a long-term relationship with someone, and... well, no point kidding myself, she'd probably be thrilled about it, if only because it would suggest I was becoming more interested in such things, but I'm going to have to say, and no offense to you, that I'm really not interested." Ranma meandered slowly, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

"See? No problem, then." She replied, moving on to casually unbutton her shirt.

"Yeah! Get naked already!" The fairy agreed, far too happily for the situation, already dressed appropriately. Undressed, rather, as the case may be. Ranma's eyes began flicking around to find escape routes, out of long-ingrained habits he'd still not managed to be rid of.

"You know, I would be fine sleeping outside." he pointed out. "I mean, I saw a very nice patch of thick grass nearby, and a rock with a lot of soft moss clinging-..."

As if in direct, malicious response to his half-formulated escape plan, a sudden, driving rain began, beating the earth and bamboo with thousands of furious water droplets all at once, and showing no sign of conveniently stopping the way it had suddenly started. Ranma twitched.

"Yeah... you too, nature. You too." He seethed quietly, boundless and impotent rage focused at the storm.

By this point, the bamboo guide had folded her shirt, revealing in the process that she apparently didn't really believe in underclothing, and the fairy was staring at him with an eerie intensity usually reserved for a cat that had just located a particularly plump and juicy mouse. He sighed in resignation.

"My pants stay on." He declared, in a long-suffering tone.

xxx

He didn't sleep well that night, although for self-preservation, if nothing else, he wouldn't bring it up. In their sleep, the fairy had latched over his face like a barnacle, or one of those aliens from that one horror movie, and the yakitori-lady had seemed to suddenly sprout six extra arms in her unconsious attempt to wrap herself around him. On top of that, he was pretty sure she was either running a deadly fever, or was something other than the ordinary human she pretended to be, as at a guess her core temperature was something like five or ten degrees higher than what he'd been pretty sure was the limit people could survive. In short, his arms were pinned, he had trouble breathing through a faceful of fairy, he was uncomfortably hot, and to top it all off, a spring from the mattress was poking painfully into his back.

The third issue, at least, he could alleviate somewhat with the use of the Soul of Ice technique, but that proved to only make things worse in other areas, as his current bedmates clamped onto him all the more tightly and eagerly for the temperature change.

Truly, he reflected somberly, as he listened to the rain let off just at the point when it had done all the damage it possibly could, the life of a wandering martial artist was indeed fraught with peril.

xxx

"My lord Herb." The general said calmly, dropping to one knee as he entered the prince's courtroom. "Your orders have been fulfilled to the letter. However..."

"You wish an explanation. This is not unreasonable. Rise. Walk with me."

A few minutes passed in silence as the pair removed themselves to a more secluded area, each checking privately for eavesdroppers.

"... As you well know, I cannot lay claim to the title of Dragon King while unwed, and have not yet been able to find a bride worthy of the title. Who could be convinced to become my bride, at least. As such, my abilities are understandably limited. There are any number of piffling restraints upon my actions, as I am sure you understand. I will speak only of the most important. Most primarily... I am forbidden, by our law, to declare a full war. This does not prevent me from moving and directing some number of troops, but it does severely limit the scope of what I can bring to bear. As such, I must be more... circumspect, with my actions. To achieve the greatest possible effect with the minimum expenditure of effort."

"I see." The general said, despite that he personally felt everything would be much more simple if he could just gather up every musk capable of lifting something sharp or heavy and charging across the territory of the other tribes of Jusendo as a unified, screaming horde. Resolved faster too, one way or the other.

"Yes. And so... I indulge in subterfuge. Theatrics. I will admit, had Saffron proven amenable to a solidified alliance, I would have been more than pleased with that outcome. I did not, however, believe that that would prove to be the case, indeed, it was not only not my primary plan, but it was not even a secondary or tertiary plan. No... the current scenario is rather more elaborate."

The general nodded and waited patiently for the explanation to continue, as the prince chuckled darkly to himself.

"It began, of course, with the staged skirmishes along our border with Phoenix territory, designed specifically to gather attention without being too obvious a distraction. Naturally, wounded were to be expected, however, attacks from both sides were kept deliberately non-lethal, yet destructive enough to the landscape that later inspection by Amazon scouts would not be able to determine that neither side had fought to kill. Several elderly and terminally ill warriors, again from both sides, who wished an honorable death in combat _were_ authorized to use and be targeted by lethal attacks, and the shallow graves that were dug for them after their bodies were drug away lent verisimilitude to the illusion that had been crafted, of the first hints of a bitter war beginning to break out. In point of fact, while there were enough battlefields to indicate that there were a half dozen seperate patrols on each side of the border, it was mostly managed by a single elite squad of warriors, while the bulk of the forces I had managed to allot were focused elsewhere."

The general nodded with a grunt, having been in charge of those forces.

"And then, everything in place... I waited, patiently, for Saffron to make the first move. There are two watchposts at the borders of Amazon territory... one to the east, keeping an eye on the Phoenix tribe as well as they can through the mountains, and another to the west, focusing similar gaze upon us. Both these stations had to be neutralized, and Saffron's men were eager to do their part, burning the building to the ground, with what soldiers there were inside of it. And now..." He said, eyes seeming to flash for a moment. "We come to the next phase of my plan. After Saffron's display of wrath, I ordered the western outspost to be neutralized in... a different manner."

"Capture detail. Don't let them escape, but don't kill them if at all possible, either." The captain said, being more than familiar with the orders he had been given.

"Exactly. And you fulfilled my orders precisely, despite a few casualties, as was expected... for you see, in the days to come, it will become obvious that our actions in that regard were not 'striking a blow against an enemy' or 'siezing tactically important land before the enemy can lay claim to it'. It was 'removing desperate refugees from a hostile situation and placing them under protective custody', despite the niggling detail that we had to remove them by force." Herb said, grinning widely and viciously. "As we speak, general, certain of my men are returning from fabricating evidence of a battle between ourselves and the phoenix tribesmen on the site of that outpost, finished by setting the structure ablaze, apparently without thought that the rain coming will likely save most of the structure. We will not have 'made a pre-emptive strike', but 'risked the lives of our men to rescue the forces of a neutral third party'."

"I see..." The general said seriously, mulling the words over.

"Naturally," Herb continued. "It would be the height of foolishness for the Amazons _not_ to suggest a temporary alliance, once the wounded refugees have been tended and one of their number is sent as a messenger to their village."

"Ah!" The general said, in a sudden flash of insight.

"Yes, I believe you understand." Herb said. "At that point... We will have a temporary alliance with the Phoenix. All our battles with them will be staged for the benefit of the Amazons. We will _also_ have at least a temporary alliance with the _Amazons_, and all our conflicts with them will be staged for the benefit of the _Phoenix_. In the mean time, however, they will be fighting _each other_ with their full strength. The current scenario, General, has us spending a few months on the sidelines watching raptly as our two enemies squander their forces against each other, and then make our move against the Phoenix, with 'rescued' Amazons leading our charges. Then, with Saffron properly contained and his people dealt with, we turn upon the Amazons, and it should be little trouble to mop up whatever remains of their forces at that point. Victory, general, an overwhelming victory, with minimal losses on our side."

Even as they spoke, a similar conversation was taking place between Saffron and one of his War Advisors.

"Dragon pup's playing games. Hmph. Thinks he's smarter than me, despite being a wet behind the ears whelp." He grunted, ripping flesh off the leg of some large beast and eating it.

"Yes, my lord." The advisor fanatically replied.

"Heh... let him play his games. I'll just burn him all the harder when the time comes."

"Yes, my lord." The advisor fanatically replied.

xxx

A.N.

SILLY FAIRY, YOU DON'T GET A NAME.

Anyway, Muscle Ranger Kamen Black/Blue/Green. Someone mentioned 'fists of justice' in a review at some point. As I have done before, I latched onto that concept and totally ran with it. YOU KNOW NOW, WHO TO BLAME.

Also, given that Moukou only shows up as an EX boss (well, also, that StB game, but who's counting) details are scarce. That means, basically, that as long as I keep to those details (hates Kaguya, helps lost people in the bamboo forest, hates Kaguya, may/may not run a yakitori stand somewhere, _really hates Kaguya_) then her character is more or less up to my discretion. This can be very good, or very bad. And no, Ranma never did get her name.

Those who guessed Herb had deeper plans than just 'Get 'Em', whether you mentioned it in a review or not, yeah you totally called it. Last section of this chapter is really mainly for him to get his 'Ufufufufufu' on, and detail the scheming. He may/may not prove, yet, to be a _good_ schemer, but that's as may be. Actually, I see the situation in the Jusenkyo area as devolving until it's all three sides backstabbing both other sides constantly. Sort of a Mexican Stab-Off? So, probably not much change there.

IN OTHER NEWS: new dorm roomie is a big Twilight fan. Normally, I wouldn't care. We all have our little... _abominations_, so the whole 'turn a blind eye' thing. Except, they had the twilight dvd going _past two in the morning_. While I was trying to sleep. And they _were_ asleep, as it turned out. So, if you don't hear from me for a couple of months, it might be that I've cracked and commited a little perfectly-justifiable homicide.

Next chapter: Down, Forward, Punch for fireball? Wait, no, actually probably not. Some kind of martial face-off, though. Probably. Assuming I don't choke on it. One of these days I'll figure out how to work a 3d movie making program thingy and see if I can transpose what I'm thinking in my head about a fight scene to that. Typing it doesn't necessarily work particularly well, all the time.


	10. Chapter 10

Away to Neverland

xxx

_On the nature of Magic and Magical Artifacts._

_Magic is change. At its core, every act of magic can, to a greater or lesser degree, be classified as an implementation of a specific change. Whether a change of an items properties, in Transmutative magics, a change of the perception of something, with Illusory magics, or other, less easily quantified changes. Magical energy does not, as some have theorized, bear a true sentience unto itself, but nevertheless it seems to have the rudiments of comprehension, unified by the driving and overpowering desire to cause some kind of change. And change is, always and forever, chaos. This is why, as a learner studies magic, the most complex and intricate of preparations are required to begin with even the most simple of spells. It is not that magic is an orderly thing, and will only respond when called properly. It is because magic is chaos, and when called without proper bindings and shackles, limiting and directing it in even the most minute of details, it will slip free and wreak whatever havoc it can manage in the most unexpected and random of fashions. The simple fact is that, once the secret to the use of magic is understood, it is distressingly simple to do, and magic itself is more than eager to be used, however, by its nature it is not ever 'satisfied' with the magician's intent, and without proper restrain will continue to flow and change things until the user, which by that point is no more than a conduit through which the magic pours itself, can take no more and expires. With experience and diligent practice, of course, the need for such bindings is lessened as the caster learns to shape, contain, use, and restrain the magic through pure force of willpower alone._

_Creatures that are intrinsically magical in nature are somewhat different, already being instruments of change, and are covered in their own particular sets of notes._

_Moving along, while the nature of magic is limitless and unrestrained chaos, provided that the proper precautions are taken it is typically quite safe for the practicing magician. I will note two particularly important precautions: First, that a magical purgative be taken after any ingested magical concoction has fully run its course, and second, and likely more important given the magician's tendency to collect and hoard things, that any and all magical artifacts or enchanted trinkets not in use should be stored in individual and specifically warded containers. This is because, unlike spells, which have a fixed duration in which the magical energies are 'live', so to speak, and then go completely inert while leaving the effects behind, magical potions and artifacts will continue to have minor, but active, traces of magic for long periods of time. For potions, this time is not easily determined, and for artifacts it lasts for as long as the artifact exists. Both cases are a danger, as the active magic still bears the instinctual desire to change things, and multiple sources of the magical traces will pull and twist at each other until a critical mass is reached and 'something' happens. How long it will take for this point to be reached, and what will happen when it does, is very difficult indeed to determine. Usually, and especially in the cases of ingested traces, these effects can in no way be considered beneficial, however, they cannot occur without two differing traces of magic to pull upon each other. Which is, of course, why purgatives should be taken as soon as possible, because while a single trace of ingested magic is not particularly capable of anything on its own, sometimes the ingestion of potions cannot be pre-planned, and a second trace added to the first will leave the imbiber with the constant threat of suddenly sprouting new appendages, or new organs, or waking up one morning to realize that they have been impregnated with a clone of themselves, which I understand was quite disconcerting when Lord Sparrow made the discovery. Quite obviously, he was forever after exceptionally prompt in purging potion traces from himself, although in retrospect he was somewhat fortunate, as he bore no lasting physical harm from the ordeal. He did, however, spend several years in a mental institution, while his new son was cared for by wetnurses._

_On the other hand, simply throwing a number of artifacts into a contained space and waiting to see what happens when magic chooses to exert its will can bear unique and almost always unexpected results, typically far and away beyond what any mortal dabbler in the arts could have managed, for good or ill. I, myself, have unsuccessfully attempted this gambit in my research attempts to find a way to creat a fully sentient, independent doll, and I know of at least one other magical dabbler who seems to go out of her way to attempt to cause this effect as much as possible._

_On a final note, living in an environment with high magical density bears no particular effects that I am aware of, as it is naturally inert until an attempt is made to make use of it, save that creatures of a magical nature find it a more comfortable place to call home. This, in and of itself, brings to bear a significant assortment of risks but is a secondary effect at best, not at all related to the quantity of magic itself._

_ ~A brief excerpt from the compiled research notes of Alice Margatroid._

xxx

The first bit of the morning went mostly as planned. Ranma had pried himself loose of the bed as everyone slowly started to wake, and shared around leftover fried meat chunks he'd cooked at some point and then stuffed into non-space. To be perfectly honest, he wasn't sure when, exactly, he'd done this, but it was probably fine, as he'd noted that for some reason, time seemed to cease temporarily for whatever he stored there. Admittedly, he hadn't fully caught on to that until he'd realized just how very, very wrong the time displayed on a watch had gotten, but that was fine too, as keeping food fresh and keeping temperature the same indefinitely was the only real purpose he could think of for such an effect at the moment.

After knocking that food back, they'd left the yakitori lady's home, and less than a minute later Ranma's arm shot upwards, flicking his umbrella out of the ki-pocket through the sleeve of his coat, and it snapped open just as a flock of birds took off overhead, spilling water down directly at him.

And then, as he took a brief moment to bask in the feeling of accomplishment that came from dodging the water that would trigger his curse, he sneezed. This was not in and of itself an unusual event, as bodily functions could and did happen no matter what. What was unusual was that when Ranma sniffled slightly afterwards and reached up, she realized that her hand was too small. It took her several seconds of blank staring before she belatedly realized, in a sort of horrified rush, that she _was_, indeed, currently female, and that no, it wasn't some trick of the eyes.

"But... no way..." She whispered, umbrella dropping suddenly from nervous fingers.

She quickly withdrew a thermos filled with hot water, usually kept in reserve for sudden emergencies more important than random splashings, which could wait a little, and dumped it over her head. After a moment, he sighed in relief after confirming that he was male again.

"Oh... that's good. I was worried that the trigger had changed entirely... water gives me some control, but sneezing... man, that would have been tough. I guess... that means that there's two triggers now? Geeze, how did that even happen?" He grumbled idly to himself.

"Yeah, not that this isn't fascinating, but we're burning daylight." the yakitori-lady interrupted. "You can freak out once you're out of the forest."

"... Right." Ranma agreed, shaking himself and starting forward again, hesitating only a moment to gather the umbrella he'd dropped.

A few hours passed as the sun slowly moved through the sky, and during that time Ranma felt several sneezes starting, which he was only barely able to avoid. By the time they reached the edge of the forest, he was irritated, and his sinuses were starting to ache.

"Well, it's been fun, kids... but this is as far as I go." the white-haired guide declared, floating down to land on the ground.

"You don't leave the forest? Can't imagine that being good for sales." Ranma muttered quietly. Not quite quietly enough, as it turned out, as she arched an eyebrow and shrugged, pulling out her cigarrettes again.

"Hey. I said I was a yakitori vendor. I never said I made a lot of money off of it. But yeah, I mostly sell to the Eientei rabbits. And Keine, sometimes."

She shrugged and blew out a small cloud of tobaccoo smoke, then turned and waved a hand idly as she started to walk back into the forest.

"Lake's that way. Can't miss it, it's the only lake in Gensokyo. Mansion's on the north shore... you'll find it eventually. Try not to get lost again, 'kay?"

Ranma grunted, then pinched his nose shut as his sinuses tickled, holding it closed until the sensation passed, knowing he was only prolonging the time before an inevitable slip-up.

"Ugh... I'm going to have to sneeze sooner or later. This is the worst. Maybe I should have agreed to learn magic after all? Alice might have known why this happened..."

"I'm sure it'll be fine." The fairy replied. "And anyway, there's nothing saying you can't go back to her place."

"Maybe later. Right now, I'm going to see about finding that gatekeeper. I need to punch someone in the face until one of us can't move anymore."

xxx

When they reached the lake, the first thing that Ranma did, heedless of the curse, was to strip off down to his boxers and undershirt, wade hip deep out into the water, and dunk her head beneath the rippling surface. She held it there until her breath ran out, and she surged back up to gasp in deep lungfuls of air. Sure, she was soaked to the bone now, but her sinuses had quieted and there was now no hint of the headache that had been slowly building since he'd rose. It was, she felt, a relatively even trade of discomfort for discomfort.

"Hey... hey...! Why are you trying to drown yourself, lady?" A childish voice piped, as she rubbed at her eyes.

She almost sighed before opening them, as it was starting to seem like she couldn't go anywhere without running into some distraction or other, and looked up to see what could be mistaken for a young child floating several feet above the surface of the water, staring curiously at her. Well, could be mistaken for a child were it not for the six jagged icicles floating behind her like some kind of detached wings, at least. They were something of a clear givaway that this 'child' was not quite what she immediately seemed.

She ignored the question and turned instead to the _other_ fairy floating nearby.

"Friend of yours?"

"I'm sure it's slipped your mind, but I'd never been to Gensokyo before we came." The fairy responded dryly.

Ranma just stared her down, waiting patiently for an actual answer to the question she had asked. After only a few moments, the fairy sighed.

"That's a no. No, I've never seen her before, inside or outside of Gensokyo's boundary. _Really_ though, do I ask if _you_ know every _human_ we meet, when that's clearly not the case?"

Her pained diatribe went unanswered, as Ranma had mostly stopped listening after the first no.

"Whatever. In any case, I was just soaking my head for a moment. But hey... don't you think introductions should come before weird questions?"

"You never asked the guide what her name was. Not even once." the fairy pointed out, grumbling to herself.

"You should introduce yourself first!" The other, new fairy argued, looking very somber and serious about the declaration as she crossed her arms over her chest. "After all, I live here, so that makes you visitors!"

"Fair enough." Ranma agreed. "Ranma Saotome, wandering martial artist. Don't know her name." She finished as the fairy started to open her mouth, only to shut it with a click and an irritated glower.

"Well, maybe if anyone would _listen_ when I try to say it..." she seethed under her breath.

A delicate waft of mist brushed over her, and she immediately stopped bickering, having suddenly remembered that there was, in fact, a very powerful being around at all times, who could make her existence very painful indeed if she ever started to cross the lines of what was apparently tolerated.

"I'm Cirno! The strongest!"

"... Strongest what, exactly?" Ranma asked after a moment, feeling that this was a reasonable question, and that it needed clarification. Rather than answer, Cirno just seemed to stagger slightly in midair, and Ranma pressed the assault. "The strongest fairy? The strongest girl? The strongest punches or kicks? The strongest brain? The strongest heart? Tell me... what about you is the strongest?"

"I... you... I..." Cirno stammered for a moment, before the other fairy interrupted.

"Hey. Stop toying with her. That's a cruel question. She's an _ice_ fairy."

Both Ranma and Cirno turned blank eyes to her and she sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.

"Fairies are 'eternal', bearing a form of psuedo-immortality, and come into existence with concepts. Rocks, trees, clouds, starlight and moonlight... that sort of thing, to make the parallel clear. There's always rocks, trees, and clouds wherever you go, and so those fairies exist for as long as they do. Not all fairies are lucky enough to be born of permament concepts, though. Things like ice, snow, flowers... these things are seasonal, they come and go. And so, the fairies existence comes and goes with them, unless they're exceptionally fortunate in where they come into existence." She lectured. "A snow-fairy coming into existence near the global poles, for example, where snow exists year-round would functionally be in very little danger. If they aren't so lucky... normally, once spring had come, especially in the sudden and unanticipated fashion that it did recently, a fairy of ice, such as Cirno would have 'melted', fading away to nothing within a day, and a new one would be born to take her place when the next winter came. Simply by having enough innate ability to preserve her existence outside of winter's protection proves that she is quite powerful indeed."

The blank stares continued. After a moment, she sighed and paraphrased herself.

"She should be dead. Because she isn't, that automatcially makes her the strongest ice-fairy _I've_ ever met, at least."

"... Eh, good enough." Ranma decided. "But... on that note, what kind of a fairy are you, anyway?"

"That's a rather personal question, don't you think? In any case, I'm-"

"HEY!" Cirno interrupted, instantly freezing the patch of water that Ranma had been standing in only a moment before. "There's a powerful enemy before you. Pay attention!"

Ranma landed gently on the patch of ice and rolled one shoulder idly.

"So... I guess you want to play with danmaku. What a pain... I have somewhere to be."

Ranma paused, then grinned.

"I have a better idea. You can freeze things, right? I know a little about cold, myself..." She drawled, temperature slowly lowering around herself, until her breath frosted as she exhaled. "So... let's play a little game with that, hm? We'll see who can make it colder."

If Cirno's squeal of delight was any indication, then she was more than happy to comply with this new idea.

xxx

In the end, the competition lasted several hours, and was only called off as a sort-of draw when the fairy dryly pointed out, from beyond the limits of the little game, that the _air_ was starting to liquify from the chill. This was redacted into Cirno's technical victory when it became clear that, while she was relatively uneffected by the long exposure to the ridiculously low tempereatures, Ranma could barely move.

She kindly tossed him into the lake and made idle chit-chat with the other fairy for another hour or thereabouts, while Ranma's muscles slowly thawed. It was another hour after that when Ranma crawled back out, shook herself vaguely like a dog, and collapsed in the noonday sun for another hour or so, until all the feeling had returned to her limbs, and she had recovered her full range of motion.

"You know..." She said, dryly, rising with a soft groan. "Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that whole thing wasn't the best idea I've ever had."

"You _think_?" The fairy shot back. "Geeze... you should be dead too. Ever since we met, it's been nothing but one freakishly powerful being after the next. Is this normal for you? How are you still alive?"

"That which doesn't kill you, leaves you stronger in its wake. The life of a true martial artist is fraught with peril, and all that. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt like all hell going through it, of course. It's like the breaking point... you learn to shatter rocks by being slammed repeatedly with boulders until you learn exactly where and how to strike and manipulate your ki in order to cause a cataclysmic reaction within the stone, and the technique itself isn't even the real point of the training. Through this, I believe I have found a far deeper and more thorough understanding of the nature of 'cold'."

"Do you want to play again?" Cirno asked immediately, with far too eager of a sparkle in her eyes.

"... Not right now. I need time to meditate on what I've learned from this. Next time we play, though, you won't win so easily."

"Oh, 'easily' he says. Do either of them have any idea how cold the air had to get before it started to condense? Everything in the earth below them froze and died. It'll be years before anything can grow in it again." The fairy grumbled quietly, more or less ignored.

"How boring. So! What'cha going to do now?"

Ranma paused, then glanced at the sky, checking the position of the sun.

"I was going to look for someone today, and deliver a formal challenge. I don't know exactly where they are though, only that they're the gatekeepers of a mansion off the north shore of this lake. It might already be too late for that today, by the time I find them-"

"Oh! You're talking about the red house, and the dancing guard!"

"Dancing...?" Ranma asked, bemusedly.

"Yeah! She does funny, slow dances every morning. Like, um... sort of like this."

Cirno began moving her arms and legs awkwardly, in a crude enough fashion that it took Ranma a moment to realize that she was actually pantomiming something very like some kata forms he knew.

"Tai Chi? That's not actually a dance, but it sounds like that's the right place. I don't suppose you could lead me there?" Ranma asked, pulling her clothes and coat back on over mostly-dry underclothes.

"All right, but you have to remember to come back and play with me, okay?"

"That shouldn't be a problem."

"Okay! Follow me!" Cirno declared, instantly speeding off... directly over the lake.

Ranma stared for a moment, then frowned darkly.

"... I can't fly." She grumbled, focusing ki to her feet and preparing to sprint even as Cirno shrank into the distance. The fairy quickly guessed what was about to happen and flitted over to nestle in the coat's hood.

"Alright. Never tried this before, but _let's go_!" Ranma yelled, shooting off across the water, fast enough not to sink unless she was so foolish as to stop.

As she drew near, Cirno looked backwards over her shoulder and grinned, then sped up further. Fine then. If she wanted to turn this into a _contest_, then Ranma would happily oblige. The water spraying up behind her doubled in height as she ramped her speed up.

There was no point in passing the fairy by, of course. It wasn't like Ranma had any idea where they were going, so it would be entirely counterproductive. Matching her flight speed, though, keeping right on her tail no matter how fast she went or what way she zigged or zagged, having turned the simple task of leading Ranma around into a game? That, she could do.

Minutes passed, and Cirno finally swerved in towards the water's edge, slowing down drastically. Ranma found, to her unfortunate surprise, that while she had no trouble keeping up the pace, or speeding up, coming to a sudden stop was significantly more difficult. She blew past the ice-fairy, eyes darting for something to use to kill the momentum... tree. There was a tree, not far from the shore. Not particularly tall, but it would have to do... she rocketed forward, slowing herself as much as she could on her own, and then shot vertically up the tree. At the very peak, just before it became too thin for her to control herself, she pushed off into a slow leap and backflip, landing on her feet and sliding backwards until she came to a final stop, back at the waters edge and right next to Cirno.

As the ice-fairy clapped, delighted at the showmanship, Ranma forced a grin and decided to pretend that was what she had intended to do all along.

xx

A.N.

SILLY FAIRY, YOU STILL DON'T GET A PAST. Although, actually, I will admit, I'm considering what her 'youkai power' should be. At the moment, I'm waffling between 'manipulation of color' and 'manipulation of some manner of fruit'. If the second, it could be pomegranates, strawberries, or maybe plums. Hm. Now, you may think I'm trolling you here, but I'm actually not this time. Need I remind you that Heart Is An Awesome Power? Still don't believe me? Alright, we'll start with color. If I go that way, then it would at first be exactly what you're thinking. Change the color of anything into any other color. This seems useless at first, _but_... who's to say color is limited to the visible spectrum? She changes herself to some color that can't be seen by the naked eye- Bam, invisibility. Or she fiddles around with someone else's colors. You know that thin layer of clear stuff coating your eyeball? Bam, now it's black, and you're blind until she feels like turning you back. Moving along to manipulation of (random fruit). She can manipulate _anything_ about this fruit. Flavor, texture, juiciness... shape, density and rigidness... _sharpness_ and _explosive potential_... Basically, super fruit hax. I can work with that, or the color thing, although I'll admit that any real use of either would have to wait until she'd both gotten a little bit more powerful in and of her own right, and actually choke down the humiliation long enough to own up to what her ability is, so a more creative person can suggest ways it can actually be used in a combat situation. So, this isn't an immediate thing.

Of course, if any of you peoples out there think of something better, by which I mean 'seems completely useless at first, but there's some way to hack it enough to make a DM openly weep', then I'll probably steal it out of your reviews, when that time comes. So, uh, yeah. Fair warning.

Regarding the lack of China in this episode: I AM A LYING LIAR WHO LIES ABOUT THINGS. Yeah, that ended up being delayed, after my freeze-off plot bunny hit, and I remembered that Cirno's supposed to live in/near the lake, or something. So, uh, yeah. That got delayed a bit. They'll still face off, probably next chapter, and I recently got ahold of that MMD thing (search it on youtube, I guess, because I don't feel like explaining if you don't know), So if I ever figure out how that works, I can probably translate their epic struggle into AN INTERPRETIVE-DANCE BATTLE WHICH WILL MAKE DEMONS WEEP FROM THE BEAUTY, or just punch each other in the face repeatedly. But Awesomely. Eventually.

Oh, hard truth time. I actually don't know, off the top of my head, exactly how cold it has to be before air starts to liquify. If it starts to liquify. Hell, I don't know, it sounded good in my head, and I don't care enough to check up on the SCIENCE! involved in that. I could probably google it but, again, apathy. So yeah.

Hm, glance-through... yeah, Mokou's out of the story now... well, until we hit the plot of IN, anyway, and I'll have to look up which order the games go in before that happens. I _think_ that's next, after I've sufficiently mangled and traumatized the IaMP plot, but I could be wrong, and once that's done there would be in-betweeny plot stuff first anyway, so... yeah, get there when I get there.

Whaaat else... oh, the sneeze thing. Well, I've always felt that there was _no_ way that there could possibly be no aftereffects whatsoever from all the magical crap Ranma ends up involved in, and ingesting, and so... yeah, you aren't buying this at all are you. Not entirely untrue, but I'll admit, I just wanted to screw around with him. So, extra triggers, and justification. And actually, I'm pretty sure it's canon justification, for the Touhou half of things, anyway. I read something, _somewhere_ on the Touhouwiki that corresponds directly to the artifact thing in Alice's notes. It involved stuff in Marisa's house, so I _think_ it was on Marisa's page. Or linked to her page. Or something. Look, I don't remember, but I was reading it while I wrote Alice's Notes Excerpt up there, so I know it's on the site somewhere. I just fleshed it out a bit, that's all, and then linked it directly to Ranma suffering. He will find more gender-swap triggers as time goes by, he has several of them now. It's just that a sneeze happened, so it's the first one he noticed. And they all just switch whatever gender he is currently, and he can still use the appropriate temperature water to change. Not like I locked him, or anything.

... Oh, also. On power/stage rankings and stuff. I'm thinking about being flexible about how stage ranking affects power level and whatnot. Like, maybe this person just isn't any good at Danmaku, or this one is really weak but is good at it so it doesn't matter, or whatnot. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that _every_ character from touhou is already ludicrously powerful. Ranma is also ludicrously powerful at this stage. He fits, more or less, with the rest of the obscenely overpowered cast, it's just that most are more obscenely overpowered than he is. This includes stage one bosses. Seriously, Manipulation of Insects means _oh jesus, bees, MILLIONS of BEES, wait, no, those are WASPS, BLAAARGH._ And so on. Seriously, if Wriggle was throwing Bee-maku around instead of Danmaku, then nobody would have ever passed IN stage one. Ever. They would swell up, go into anaphylactic shock, and _die_. Because_ BEEEEEES_. Enough said.

Also, there's a new name on my favorite author's list. Iced Fairy. This person is very good. Laser Eye Surgery, particularly, is one of those 'Best Thing Ever's. Once you're done here, you should take a look at this person. Stories are short _but I have no right to complain about such things_, and they're good, and I don't get why there are so few reviews. If there were more writers in the Touhou section of FFnet like this person, that would be great.


	11. Chapter 11

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Agent Scarlet, analysis has determined that your pursuit of individual S may lead you into direct confrontation with the Institute for the Advancement of Humanity. Despite their ostentatious nomiker, they are not allies to the Organization of Humanities Defence. Their methods are distasteful to the extreme, and their goals only barely palatable when phrased in the proper manner. They are, as we, technically backed by Authority, however they are primarily the tools of a foreign power, and every Emperor since the one which was forced to allow the concession of their presence upon our soil has regretted the action, and sought some means and reason to be rid of them. Sadly, while the means are not lacking, there has never been a reason that could be explained away to the suspicious common man. The institute is uncommonly good at keeping itself properly 'in line', and have wormed their festering grip so deeply into our country that none of the excuses that could be given to excise their tumor could be given without also revealing both their and our true purposes. It would be bedlam in the streets._

_The majority of humanity has safely forgotten that the things which went bump in their forefather's nights still eagerly prowl them now. They must not, above all, be reminded of this fact, save on an individual basis where no other recourse is available. This is because they would all react differently. Some would doubtless be more than happy to remain as normal, desperately trying to convince themselves that it was all a hoax. This is the best case scenario. Some would see things from our point of view, and strike out as vigilantes. On a small scale, this is not neccessarily a bad thing. On a larger one... there are simply not enough truly evil beings to go around, if a casual estimation of a third of the country took it in their heads to oppose them, untrained, unmonitored, and with no restraints upon their actions. Supernatural beings would suddenly be pouring out of the woodworks to defend themselves and their kind. It would most certainly lead to an all-out war, the scope of which could potentially cause the destruction of our entire nation. And finally, some could well decide that the Institute had the right of things after all, and secretly do what they could to follow in their lead._

_Do not initiate contact with the Institute. If at all possible, avoid any contact whatsoever._

_As standard procedure, we have pulled and enclosed the dossier of individual S. A fascinating person leading a fascinating existence. In many respects, exactly the sort of person the Organization deliberately seeks out to offer employment, although admittedly, in many respects less than ideal as well. Indeed, the idea of bringing S into our fold had already begun in official discussions prior to the current situation occurring. Regarding the captor, little has been confirmed save that she is Oni, and apparently quite powerful even for a typically powerful breed._

_Your orders are as follows. If possible, safely retrieve individual S without resorting to force of arms. This may prove difficult, as individual S seems to display signs of having grown to enjoy his captivity, bizarrely enough. Whether this proves possible or not, initiate a diplomatic meeting, but avoid making any promises if at all possible. If hostilities arise, retreat immediately. Intelligence's best and most generous estimate, should things progress to an open conflict, gives you an approximately five to ten percent chance of victory over the Oni, assuming that individual S contents himself with remaining a noncombatant. Should he choose to enter the fray, odds of victory lower drastically. Repeat: do not engage._

_Enclosed is a list of most likely destinations, and means of access._

Scarlet Thorn eyed the official letter distastefully, then carefully collected the enclosed information packets and set the rest alight, allowing it to burn to uniform grey ash as she thought. For now, she would continue as before, then.

xxx

"We're here, we're here!" Cirno called, in a childish tone that very clearly expressed a 'praise me!' sort of sentiment.

"... Looks like it." Ranma said bemusedly, as the guard ahead of them blinked slowly, obviously rousing herself from an almost-slumber. At the very least, Ranma had to applaud her restraint in not visibly yawning at them, which... well, she had to admit, would be almost as irritating as when her father did something like that, despite that the woman's absurdly vast wellspring of ki meant that she kept subconsciously checking to make sure that she hadn't, in fact, started glowing.

"Do you have business in the mansion?" The guard asked promptly.

"Not as such, no..." Ranma admitted. "My... business, if you want to call it that, is with you. Gatekeeper of the Scarlet Mansion... I, Saotome Ranma, of the Saotome Anything Goes school of Martial Arts, have come to offer you a formal challenge."

The woman blinked, then with a gentle push lifted herself away from her lazy slouch against the gate, standing tall. _Very_ tall, Ranma noted in a brief moment of inferiority. Taller than most of the men she'd encountered, really. She had to look up just to stare into the underside of her breasts...

...

A brief, inexplicable surge of irritation washed over her as she realized that the other redhead was larger than her in every way, before she banished it.

"Formal challenge?" The gatekeeper mused aloud, with evident interest. "It's been a while since the last time. Most battles in Gensokyo use magical arts over anything physical. It's been... hm. Must have been ten, fifteen years since the last time?"

She shook her head, turned, and casually swung open the gate, motioning for them to follow her inside. Within the tall stone walls, the mansion was clearly visible, even from a distance, a straight and wide well-maintained cobblestone path leading from the gates to the large front door. Off to the left, a small house sat, nothing leading to it's door but a well beaten footpath, and to the right there was a relatively-recent raised stone platform. The gatekeeper led them immediately to the right.

Rather than immediately hop up to the stage, as Ranma did, she walked around the side, to a partly concealed alcove in the wall where a small gong hung, and rang it. The tone echoed loudly within the outer walls, and with a nod, she put the gong away again and hopped up to the stage, where Ranma was waiting, smugly sitting at the side of a small, portable table, set with cheap tin cups of steaming tea and a piping kettle.

To her credit, the gatekeeper didn't so much as blink as she took a place directly opposite Ranma and eagerly snatched up the offered tea.

"You'll have to forgive me, but we can't start immediately. The lady of the house enjoys watching on the occasions that I recieve challenges..."

"So we're waiting for the spectators to show? That's fine, that's fine." Ranma took a moment to pour a little water from the kettle over her head, returning her to male. "Gives us a little time to debate rules and victory conditions and all that, anyway."

"Given the name of your school, I expect this will be a short discussion." the gatekeeper pointed out dryly. She took a sip of tea and blinked. "This has a very... interesting flavor."

"That would be the dirt the leaves got covered in when the wagon carrying them broke." Ranma said calmly, taking a gulp of his own tea. "Little dirt never hurt anyone... well, no, assuming there's no parasite eggs in it anyway. I mostly washed them off before making tea with them, though, and the water was boiling so it should be fine."

The gatekeeper stared at the cup for a long moment before either deciding that he was kidding or that she didn't actually care and taking another sip.

"Unusual aftertaste." She noted. "No, I don't want to know what caused it. I'm likely happier not knowing exactly what I'm drinking has been through."

"Probably wise, in the long run." Ranma admitted. "I'm kind of hard on the food I steal and don't eat right away. Anyway... yeah, I'm not big on rules. Just, stick with things that can be done with martial arts and ki, I'd prefer we not actually kill each other, and I'd appreciate you not just flying higher than I can jump and raining energy blasts down on me. It might not technically be cheating, but it would get boring really fast, and then I'd have to retaliate by throwing boulders and big chunks of wall at you, and... yeah, more trouble than it's worth." He grumbled.

"... I think that's do-able." She slowly agreed. "So, no magic, try not to kill you, and keep flight low. Is that right?" She said, the merest hint of a superior tone floating through, as though she was speaking to a child.

"That's almost exactly what I said, yes... but somehow, the way you said it really irritates me."

"Ah? Is that so? Hm... Oh, and here comes the mistress now." The gatekeeper noted.

Ranma glanced off to the side. Coming in at a slow meandering walk, or really something more of a saunter were four newcomers, half holding up parasols for the other half. The first pair handled this situation as though it were a simple matter of course, and nothing to be thought of, an elegant looking maid with a vaguely amused smile holding the shade out for a young looking winged girl with a similar, albeit wider, grin. A matter of formality, or so it seemed, and nothing more. The other...

Well, the woman holding up the second umbrella had two sets of wings, one in the normal place and the other tiny and sprouting out of her head, and seemed clearly concerned for her companion. At a glance, it was easy to see why... she was clearly very ill, with deep bags under her eyes, an unhealthy cast to her already pale skin, and a slight sheen of feverish sweat. Clearly, the umbrella was something of a necessity for her at the moment, as without it the heat of direct sunlight would overcome her frail constitution.

Also, she was floating rather than walking, but as pretty much everyone he'd met since coming to Gensokyo seemed to be able to fly with little or not effort, that didn't seem as impressive as it could have been.

"Audience is here, huh? I guess it's about time to wrap up the small talk."

"Yes... In any case, I, Hong Meiling, Gatekeeper of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, accept your challenge and terms."

Ranma nodded. Then, without any hesitation or mercy, he dashed his still-steaming tea into Meiling's face in a cheap shot that would win him the match quickly. Or, at least, that would have, except that her arm shot up immediately to splash away the worst of the scalding liquid, and the rest had little apparent effect. He followed up by flipping the table as he rose, and kicked it forward while the flat surface was perpendicular to the ground, sending it, and to a lesser extent, the kettle and teacups spinning through the air at her.

She swatted it away with one hand, of course, but he'd expected that and had already started to follow up after the kick, lunging forward with a full power blow to the stomach.

It smacked solidly into the palm of her other hand, as it seemed that she had either predicted his plan of attack two or three steps in advance, or was simply absurdly fast, and her fingers clamped down over his fist before he could retract it. As she pivoted, he felt himself start to lift off of the ground, and frantically pushed off it with all his might, barely able to exert just enough force against the ground with his toes that the uncontrolled throw he'd almost fallen prey to was instead a mostly-controlled leap and flip, and that he landed on his feet instead of painfully face-first. He immediately kicked out backwards, and completely failed to score a solid hit to her midriff.

He'd been expecting that, actually. But in the position they were in, the only ways to counter that attack were either for Meiling to release her vice-like grip on his fist, or to leave herself vulnerable for another, more punishing blow in turn. As her fingers opened, he hopped forward and out of range of another casual grab, twisting lightly in midair to leave him facing her again.

"You fight kinda dirty." She mentioned, in a tone that was neither upset nor derogatory, but simply holding a slight sense of interest.

"Heh... name of my school says it all. Would you believe that I'm it's most honorable, forthright practicioner?"

He was answered with a slight, amused quirk of the eyebrow.

"Hmph. You're right there. Not that hard. Founder invented it to help him steal _panties_. My old man aint much better... made two sets of new, really strong techniques, entirely designed to make his petty thefts and burglaries easier for him. Still haven't figured out Tendo's deal, not that I care. And me? I just plain hate to lose. My pride... burns me from the inside out. I can't stand it. So, while I'm more than happy to play nice and fair when I know for sure I'm going to win anyway... when fighting someone as good as you, I just can't allow myself to hold _any_ cheap shot or dirty trick in restraint."

"I understand perfectly. But I'm afraid I must humble that pride of yours." Meiling said, and _blurred_.

From this point, Ranma was forced into full defense, using his body and ki to their absolute limits in keeping himself away from the gatekeepers attacks. What struck him, though, was how _different_ she was now. At the start, she had fought mostly defensively, using an unusual style that was something like tai chi in the way that Anything Goes was something like street-brawling. Every move was calculated exactly, using only the bare minimum required force and motion to deflect, dodge, or turn his attacks against him. A perfectly defensive art, well suited to a gatekeeper, who didn't need to follow or even defeat her opponents. So long as they retreated, and didn't pass the gate, her duty was carried out. Now, however, was much different. It was like she was an angry, cornered beast wrapped up in a human shape. Every attack was vicious, would be devestating if it landed, and somehow familiar. It would have been less unnerving if she had actually gone berserk... but no. Rather than wild-eyed rage, her eyes were cold and flinty. Every move was still, as before, calculated deliberately and specifically, in an absence of any true sense of malice.

In fact, Ranma was almost sure that she had decided on this course of attack out of a warped sort of kindness, in attempt to spare the pride he'd already declared vulnerable by demonstrating exactly how outmatched he was. Feh. As though he hadn't known that from the beginning.

But her defence had weakened. So, interestingly enough, he was pretty sure he had a better shot at victory now, assuming he could break away from her assault long enough to get off his counterattack...

He rolled desperately out of the way of a crushing stomp, and as he came up to his knees, just for a split second, he found his eyes drawn to the golden star decorating Meiling's hat, and he took in the character carved into it. And then, as he sidestepped another attack, and began to leap backwards, he _understood_.

_"I'm afraid I don't have any particularly amusing recent anecdotes for dinner conversation."_ He remembered, Herb's words from that dinner not so long ago echoing inside his head.

"I know who you are..." He said aloud, a slight hint of surprise coloring his tone.

_"Instead... maybe a story will suffice? Yes... I'll tell you a historical tale, then. Of the glory days of the Musk, the birth of the Dragon Dynasty, and of..."_

"Chained Queen Cinnamon!" Ranma yelled, raising his off hand to point directly at Meiling's face.

Stunned, she hesitated in the attack. Not for long. Barely a fraction of a second, less than an eyeblink's worth of time. But it was long enough, as Ranma's other fist shot forward, the spiral of cold ki he'd been accumulating over his knuckles flickering into momentary sight from all he'd had to put into it to get this desperation move to work, and a ropy, spiraling, horizontal cyclone blasted forward, slamming directly into the patch of torso just beneath where ribs met each other at an angle. She was catapulted backwards, eyes wide at the impact, to slam into the wall behind her as the miniaturized force of nature continued to push relentlessly and unstoppably forward, cracking the face of the bricks behind her with its force. When it let up, she dropped to her knee and coughed into one hand.

Ranma recalled a certain similarity between this and the time he'd first met Suika. And then memories were banished, and eyes widened as Meiling rose, wiping at her mouth, a coin-sized patch of fabric worn completely through, but otherwise completely none the worse for the wear from taking an attack that he was reasonably sure would have torn Mousse or Kuno limb from limb, and at the very least ruin the rest of Ryoga's day. Once more, he found it thoroughly confirmed that there was just no comparison at all between the fighters here and those of Nerima. He forced himself to continue talking, in an effort to stall and catch his second wind.

"You know, I almost didn't put it together. But the way you started fighting was almost eerily similar, and then the badge on your head just clinched it, shouting what, if not who, you are to the world, for all to see. I guess... the pride of dragons burns pretty painfully too, huh?"

"... You could say that." She said, frowning slightly for the first time since he'd walked up to the gate. "That move... reminds me of something. An amazon technique, huh? So, those dried-up, cantankerous, wretched old hags are still stinking up that bit of China, are they?"

"Forever and always. Then, anyone who knowingly lives so near such a cursed place has to be harder to completely stamp out than a nest of cockroaches, just by default."

"Hmph. Don't I know it. You have to be pretty dumb just to travel through that stretch of mountains, though I suppose that _you'd_ know well enough about that. So, I'd guess, then, that you've met one of my descendants. And here I was so certain I'd completely pruned the offshoots of the family tree, too."

"... So, I'm guessing if I say 'yes', you aren't going to start planning a happy family reunion with cake and wine."

"Not really, no." She admitted freely. "But... eh. You don't have to worry about me running off to finish the job, either. It's been long enough that anyone alive back then is almost definitely dead, and no point to punishing someone for the crimes of men more than a thousand years ago."

Ranma caught the apparent mistress of the house blinking and frowning at the dropped number out of the corner of his eye.

"That's good to hear, I guess... because I know something that I'm sure the mighty Cinnamon would be interested to hear. See, they recently found a thing they lost, the counterpart to that ladle. What it does, the kettle undoes... you understand?"

For a moment, despite that her guard didn't drop in the slightest, Meiling looked _sorely_ tempted. Then she shook her head.

"It's been too long. I can't even remember much of what it was like, to be as I was then. Assuming it even works properly, anyway. I was cursed and sealed human. Then, as a human, I became youkai, to shield my new weakness. If I could become unsealed, it could well leave me only sometimes as I was, with levels of power I've only been able to at most scrape at the vestiges of since, and sometimes youkai, but it could also leave me as I was and sometimes as a vulnerable human. I'm too old to take risks like that, boy."

"Hm. Still, had to offer. I know how I'd react to it if I got locked, and someone knew how to fix it but didn't think to tell me. Discretion over valor, and all that."

"..." Meiling said, and blurred again, leafing Ranma scrambling out of the way of a kick to the side.

"Speaking of which..." She said. "We were fighting, weren't we. We should get back to that."

Ranma grunted as the battle began anew, the gatekeeper no longer interested in discussion. It hadn't lasted as long as he'd have liked, but he'd managed to recover somewhat, and began quickly burning through his recovered reserves.

The next minute or so was a chaotic maelstrom of pain, pounding fists and feet and blasts of energy and cutting winds, mostly focused at him, and most of which he was able to dodge. Not all, though, and what he couldn't manage to evade was almost invariably excruciating. He was heavily battered, now, bleeding freely from one nostril and the corner of his mouth, and from the way it felt he wouldn't be at all surprised if a doctor were to suddenly show up and declare that an organ or two had been completely mashed into a useless, soupy pulp.

The short of it was that he was losing, slowly but steadily. On the bright side, though, he'd figured something out. It wasn't that Meiling was predicting his every move twelve or thirteen steps in advance, as he had initially suspected. _He_ didn't predict or plan his actions more than a step or two ahead, after all. But the truth wasn't much better... she was simply so absurdly skilled and practiced that she _instantly_ recognized every move he made, from every style he had integrated, the moment he began to make it, and from there her body moved almost on its own to the correct counterattack. There was no tripping her up by deliberately setting things up with feints, either... she seemed to recognize the difference between them and the real thing almost instinctually. And to top it all of, she was significantly stronger than him, physically, and faster to boot.

It was like fighting that damn mirror-clone all over again, except the clone was serious about the fight, had about a thousand years of experience over him at best guess, was roughly two-thirds again as tall as she should have been, and _okay,_ so it wasn't much like fighting the mirror-clone at all. But the train of thought still gave him an idea.

How to fight someone just like him, who knew every one of his usual tactics and could pluck the fuse out of them right the second he started them up? There were probably all kinds of answers, but at the moment he was mostly concerned with avoiding the gut-shots she seemed to have deliberately started aiming for and so keep his insides inside, so he could only think of two options offhand.

First, break out the _really_ esoteric stuff to blindside her with. Stuff that she would have no immediate counter for, that he usually tried not to even think about, out of sheer mental self-preservation, like martial tea ceremony, or banking, or martial figure skating, though he would have to manufacture the ice himself somehow, or cosplay martial arts, or ballroom dance battling, or any number of other martial arts and crafts he'd had no choice but to pick up at some point or another. This was no good, as he wasn't in any condition to use most of them, and almost all were highly situational. Maybe next time, if he started with them right off the bat. Presuming there was a next time, anyway.

The other option was nearly as bad. Just drop all semblance of forms or styles, and go at it almost completely at random, like any street brawler or thug. Almost certainly suicide on his part, but also most probably the only way he could even possibly scrape a win off at this point.

He even knew a way to counter her speed advantage, at least, though only for a limited time, a minute or so, perhaps, and then the match would be done with, one way or the other. It was a long-odds, crazy tactic with almost no chance of success, but it was all he had left. And it wasn't like he was going to last much longer, anyway. At his best guess, he had maybe five minutes at most before another hit slipped through his guard, and then he was done. Better to go out in a blaze of glory.

With teeth grit from the effort, Ranma gathered up every drop of ki he could spare without dying instantly, and focused the chestnut fist over his entire body. Time itself seemed to slow down as he shot into motion, putting his entire body into every attack.

It still didn't seem like quite enough. All it did was place them on a mostly-equal footing, in terms of speed. Meiling was still countering everything he threw at her, it was just that now she had to work for it a little bit... And then, he shunted almost all of the technique into one arm, taking a glancing blow to the shoulder as the rest of him slowed down, while that fist snaked its way inside of her guard, landing a solid blow with almost every last ounce of his remaining power backing it up.

His second clear hit of the whole fight, and coincidentally zeroed in on exactly the same spot as the first. He had no time to celebrate that small victory, however, as she immediately made him pay in kind with a vicious uppercut, sending him fllying through the air like a thrown ragdoll, landing in a crumpled heap with a soft crunch from one of his shoulders. His vision swam, and darkness began to slowly close in.

"Someone like you... just a guard...?" He chuckled feebly, finding himself unable to rise, completely burned out from the fight. "I can't imagine... how absurdly broken... the people inside..."

With a soft sigh, blackness overcame him, and with a soft stab of regret he finally recalled his fathers forbidden techniques, which she couldn't possibly have seen before. That would have been a better plan, he realized, and then lost consciousness.

Meiling, for her part, was coughing and hacking violently into one hand as his eyes closed. Slowly, she managed to stop, and then stared into her palm for a long moment.

Then she sighed, deeply.

"Ah... in all of my time as a youkai... there has only ever been one human that could shed my blood, through any means..." She stared into her hand again where, in the midst of the phlegm and drool and other associated nastiness, a single spot of red glistened wetly, then glanced meaningfully towards her gathered superiors before turning back to her fallen foe. "Now... there are two. Is it... fate? I wonder..."

xxx

A.N

HELLO PEOPLES. Longer chapter for you today, containing the promised China v Femboy showdown. Yeah, took a while to put together. You'll just have to deal with it. In the meantime, I at least have the 'written down somewhere' lead-in bit of next chapter helpfully set up for me if I want to go that route, backstory of Queen Cinnamon. It, uh... yeah, it probably won't be pleasant. Just advance warning there.

Anyway, yeah, I said the Institute was government-backed. I never claimed that they were HAPPY about having the Institute around, or that they weren't on the hunt for something that hadn't been covered up quite well enough to use as a reason to give them the boot, or that they weren't also running one or three or a dozen counter-Organizations. So, not a plot-failure. They just have no choice in the matter for some reason, probably a war-concession or something like that, don't assume that history went down exactly like history went down or anything either. Could be any number of wars and stuff there that didn't really hapen, and contrarywise, any number that didn't and did. Yeah, Scarlet Thorn, whoever the hell she is outside the random neato codename, is a government backed devil hunter. Her partner... not so much. EXPECT HILARITY TO ENSUE WITH THIS SITUATION, ONCE THEY ACTUALLY SHOW UP.

Yeah, the whole point with the OC's is that I'm really restraining myself to keeping this just one cross. You people have _no idea_ how much I just want to have Superman show up, drop-kick the Death Star into Goku's face, then leave for absolutely no reason. _NO IDEA._ But, yeah, restraint. Tohou theoretically has enough going on to keep my plotline attention deficit in line, anyway, so that should help. Thanks to all who suggested magical girls and whatnot, but yeah, no more crossovers until I crack under the weight of the 'you know what would be awesome? MAKING THEM TEAM UP TO FIGHT WOLVERINE' sort of plotbunnies. Crackbunnies. Trying to keep this story with as low a crack-content level as possible, given the two settings involved. So, OC's instead. Moving on.

Anyway, DORM WARZ CONTINUE. Yeah, I guess I could just go ask for a new room and hope one's available, but then I'd have to pack all my crap together, move it, unpack again, and I'd be stuck with this nagging sense of _AAAAAGH, I LOST_ for weeks and weeks after that, which would make me paradoxically depressed, which means you people get no chapters. Writing doesn't happen when I'm depressed. Anyway, late nights, early mornings, loud weekend parties with multiple guests when I'm trying to catch up on lost sleep... you know, the works. I've countered this assault on my sanity by catching a cold or a flu or something, whatever that was, working through the misery of illness, and 'accidentallly' pointing my face in their general direction whenever we were both in the room at the same time and I suddenly had to cough/sneeze. Don't know if I succeeded in sharing the misery around, but past few days they've been significantly more withdrawn and managable, and I may or may not have heard a few sniffles. Maybe I'm just imagining what I want to hear. Anyway, I AM CURRENTLY WINNING, I think, SO HUZZAH.

Yeah, Ranma's crazy-tough by this point. Just, almost everyone he meets keeps on insisting on being _even crazy tougher_. Just how it goes. Guy who suggested it, can't think offhand of a way for Ranma to ride a vacuum blade without having to go pick up severed toes to have them re-attached afterwards. Not quite ready to include complete amputations on the list of greivous bodily harms Ranma's suffered just yet. Fairies power's still probably either color or fruit.

Anything else I can think of to ramble about...? No? No, I'm good. Okay, uploading time, then for sleeps.


	12. Chapter 12

Away to Neverland

xxx

_My boy, it's been a long time indeed since anyone's asked me such esoteric questions. Then, you've always been an insatiably curious lad, and you were quick to discover that the stories told about times long past don't always quite mesh with historical records, whether through fanciful exaggeration or deliberate skewing and mis-quoting of the facts. Still, hardly anyone thinks twice about the oldest of the old myths, ones that are repeated nightly to our children. My word, I had to dust off some very old tomes and collections of papers indeed, when I heard that you were interested in learning the true tale of the Chained Queen Cinnamon._

_To begin, I find that it is best I briefly restate the accepted myth. King Tarragon the first, in his wisdom, realized that as the ruling line of the Musk, he needed to instill his line with the blood of the mightiest creatures of the world, and so set off to find a Dragon. After an undisclosed period of questing, he located such a being, 'A mighty wyrm who ruled over the mountain in which it laired, whose scales glimmered with every color of the rainbow, and spoke with a wisdom equal to his own'. They fought in some epic battle, the details of which vary from one telling to the next, until eventually Tarragon emerged victorious, and the defeated dragon bowed to his will, voluntarily bathing itself in the spring of drowned woman at Jusenkyou in its eagerness to bear his noble young, and was renamed 'Cinnamon', and forever after decorated herself with golden chains, to demonstrate binding herself to the fate of Tarragon and his line._

_Preposterous poppycock, the lot of it. To start, even if the tale was uniformly true, then Queen Cinnamon would never have dissappeared. After Tarragon's death, she would have remained to oversee his progeny, and rule as regent in their place until they grew, at the very least. Further, Dragons are creatures of patently absurd supernatural power. Any tale of a human triumphing over a Dragon in single combat, through anything but the most unlikely fortunes of circumstance, are at very most allegorical representations, turning the hero of the tale into a perfection of humanity for the masses to strive towards becoming. Interestingly, detractors of the Musk seem to forget this as well, as their stories tend to be much the same as our own, save that they imagine Cinnamon to have been a mindless, slavering beast both before and after the curse, much like any simple animal would have been, and they suggest that Tarragon simply directed some number of powerful warriors to capture her in his stead, and drag her unwillingly to Jusenkyou._

_Their tales are equally incorrect. The truth of the matter is, I am afraid, rather less palatable. Certainly, almost nothing like the heroic bedtime tale I have previously outlined, and not a story for the ears of wide-eyed children._

_To begin, while there was, in fact, a Tarragon, he was not as the stories made him out to be. He was part of a group of like-minded individuals, neither the strongest of their number nor the weakest, and neither the most intelligent nor the least. In all respects, average at most. It is a simple fluke of chance that the mythical First King of the Musk was named after him, rather than any of his associates. Perhaps it is a hint that he was the one to form the Plan, which this group acted upon. Then, perhaps not. The story is accurate, somewhat, in that should children have been sired with Dragon's blood flowing in their veins, they would become the ruling class of the Musk almost by default. From there, the fanciful tales and reality diverge rather drastically._

_This group did, indeed, seek out a Dragon, and by all indications it was much as Cinnamon was described in the tales, though she went by a different name then, one lost to time. Majestic, Powerful, even Beautiful, and certainly of a level of intelligence similar to any human, at the very least. Upon discovering where she laired, they spent no less than six years patiently waiting, studying her and preparing their plan before they acted._

_When they did make their move, it was not an attack. Rather, they led great trains of wagons filled with slaughtered herdbeasts and great casks of the drink of the time to her lair, and prostrated themselves before her in apparent wholehearted worshipful adulation. Cinnamon was, it seems, well pleased with both the sacrifice and the adoration, for when they suggested to turn the procession into a feast in her honor, at a nearby place chosen seemingly at random, she agreed. For days afterwards, they ate and drank and made merry, sleeping one at a time and in turns, before Cinnamon had finally gorged herself to completion and drunk herself into unconsciousness at the base of a small cliff, having lowered her guard in the presence of nothing more than what she percieved to be a harmless cult dedicated to her. They let her sleep for a matter of hours as they roused and sobered themselves, then scaled the cliff and wheeled out a huge vat filled with Jusenkyo water from its hidden place and poured it over the edge and onto the Dragon, a feat which I understand 'required every one of them straining themselves to the utmost of their might'. I cannot imagine the undertaking it must have been, to collect and move so much water, secretly and safely, and no records tell if anyone was accidentally cursed along the way. Still, it certainly explains the long preparation time._

_In any case, the sudden shift roused Cinnamon from her repose almost instantly, but she was unable to defend herself effectively as the group came upon her, and while the fight was long and difficult, in no small part due to her desperation to escape, and that her supernatural powers were, while greatly diminished, still present, she eventually found herself bound with chains prepared specifically to seal away her power, and forced into a cage which proved to be slightly too small for her, as apparently she was a much larger woman than they had expected. She was kept docile through forced injections and inhalations of powerful drugs, and was not removed from the cage until they returned to their stronghold, and she was removed to an underground cell. From this point, 'Queen Cinnamon' was spoken of, but never seen by any of the common Musk._

_It seems then that an argument arose among the group, as while they agreed that any children sired upon Cinnamon would be of the ruling class of the Musk, they ALL desired to be the one to sire those children, and so reap the prestige of doing so. In time, a consensus was reached- they would form a ruling council, each taking an equal share of the glory of rule, and each having an equal chance of siring the first dragon-child, though none would know who had done so. And so, as one, they descended unto the cell holding Cinnamon chained within._

_It is not known exactly what occured within that cell, but the generalities are easily guessed. In any case, whatever occurred, it was enough to finally break the already strained Cinnamon's mind and spirit, and for the next seven years and seventy seven days, she lay catatonic and unresponsive, swallowing the food and drink placed within her mouth, and quietly bearing to term and birthing children over the course of that time, but not truly responding to anything. Then, having already birthed nine children, and beginning to swell with another, 'the spark of life re-entered her eyes' and she reclaimed her sanity._

_Over the course of the next several months, Cinnamon began to systematically and deliberately seduce Basil, the strongest but least intelligent of the original group, showing him favor and whispering honeyed words into his ears. She convinced him that through her captivity, she had slowly fallen in love with him, that it was that love which had pushed her to take hold of her senses again, and further, that it was their child growing within her even then. Being a simple man, Basil began to believe her words, and slowly his affection for her grew, and eventually blossomed into an honest love for the imprisoned Cinnamon, and he began to, of his own volition, prevent the others from seeing her, becoming quite the jealous lover. They were not well pleased with this turn of events, but neither did they wish to establish the precedent of turning upon one of their own over such a small matter, as each had grown wary and suspicious of all the others over the years as their political power grew, and so they let the matter pass, turning instead to their courtesans and wives._

_At length, she revealed her one request to Basil, that she be moved from the underground cell to a comfortable room, and the chains be removed, 'such that she may love him with all sincerity'. Being fully under the sway of her seduction, he eventually agreed, and secretly took the key to her chains from its resting place, and loosed her bonds._

_It was the last error Basil ever made. From fragments of penned journal entries and documents, by the time Cinnamon left the cell, her long, multicolored hair had been soaked into a uniform, wet crimson with the blood of her foolish lover. It was, it seemed, not 'love' which had returned her from the brink of madness, but rather 'hatred', and the desire to extract vengeance of those who had imprisoned and abused her. After escaping the cell, she went upon a murderous rampage through the group's stronghold, which had since been remodeled to be a significantly larger castle, killing everything she found that lived, man, woman, child, or beast, in a completely unreasoning fury. Of the thousand or more occupants of what may as well have become a village enclosed in a single building, there were enough survivors to be counted on a single hand, including Cinnamon herself. Even her own children were not spared her wrath, and as there is significant reason to believe that she deliberately induced a miscarriage in herself along the way, it is reasonable to believe that the only reason one survived was because he was the eldest and, by sheer chance, was away on his first hunting trip with a group of warriors and courtiers at the time._

_Following this massacre, Cinnamon disappeared entirely, and it is uncertain whether she was sought out but could not be found, or if the remaining Musk simply did not wish to find her at all, fearing the result of such an endeavor._

_And so, the sordid truth of the tale comes to a close. I am almost sorry to pen this letter to you, so soon after you have returned from your sojourn to Japan, rather than speak to you in person, but such tales are not things to be spoken aloud. Your father would be most displeased were he to hear of it, as while I am given to understand he was much the same seeker of knowledge as yourself in his youth, he later decided that it was not proper for that knowledge to spread beyond those who absolutely had to know. I trust you understand the deep, personal risk that I am taking in even passing this message along to you, my dear Prince Herb._

_Cilantro, Master-Librarian and Keeper of Secrets of the Musk Empire._

xxx

"Well... that _was_ a little interesting." Remilia mused aloud, as Meiling rolled her shoulder around and then stood quietly, waiting for the order to drag Ranma back outside the gates.

Remilia surprised her, though, after a moment of considering the fallen fighter.

"... Have him brought inside, Sakuya. Ah... and you. As you were."

"... Of course, mistress." Meiling replied, and turned to make her way back to her post.

Remilia began to turn, then considered the fairies, both stunned silent and immobile from the display, to one degree or another.

"The tagalongs can come too, I suppose." She magnanomously decided. "Provided they don't break anything."

xxx

When Ranma woke up, it was to an argument.

"Freezing him _won't_ help! I _know_ it helps you heal faster, if you don't just take enough damage to discorporate and reincarnate. That's because _you are an ice fairy_. Human bodies, no matter how freakishly strong and resilient, _do not work that way_."

It took him a moment to comprehend what he was hearing. Then his eyes snapped completely open and he sat upright, heedless of how he was aggravating his healing injuries. With a slight pout, Cirno dispelled the glow of faint blue that had gathered around her hands.

"_Thank_ you." he muttered earnestly, as the smaller but clearly wiser and more level-headed fairy lowered her arms. It wasn't like he'd die of it, he'd been frozen before. Thawing while injured wouldn't have been pleasant, though.

"... hmph. You're welcome." She muttered back. "Though, it wasn't entirely for your sake. If I let anything too bad happen to you, then _she'll_ eat me. Or do something even less pleasant."

"Even so."

"Um... pardon me..." a new fairy poked her head in through the doorway, and Ranma took a moment to wonder why there were suddenly fairies everywhere he turned. "I've been sent to tell you, if you were awake, that dinner will be served in three-quarters of an hour. Um, formal attire can be provided... if you wish." she stammered, clearly not at all used to speaking formally.

"I... think I'll take you up on that, actually. Probably have enough time to clean myself up a little, too." Ranma decided, lurching out of the bed, only staggering slightly as he took to his feet. "No point showing up drenched in fight-stink and wearing dirty road clothes if I don't really have to."

"Ah... of course. An outfit will, um, be brought up for you shortly. And there's a guest bathroom through that door... uh, if you require assistance, then..."

"I shouldn't need help. I'm not _that_ badly hurt." Ranma insisted, wobbling a little as he limped to the door.

The messenger clearly didn't really believe him, but left. Ranma actually didn't have that much trouble getting clean, after he stared for a moment and a dim memory reminded him that western bathrooms were designed for you to clean yourself _in_ the bath. The tricky bit was finding a way to wriggle out of his clothes that didn't leave him biting back blinding, searing agony.

Shortly afterwards, wrapped in a towel, he stared bleakly down at the red tuxedo laid out on the freshly made bed. His entire body seemed to painfully throb in direct protest to the idea of wrestling himself into the constraining suit, but he forced himself through the reluctance and laboriously clothed himself. He _might_ have considered asking for help with that bit, except that the room was empty, the fairies having apparently headed out early in order to give him some privacy. And it wasn't that he didn't appreciate that, but as he found himself needing to abruptly sit down and get a second wind after the ordeal, he realized that he resented it in almost equal measure.

On the plus side, while the tuxedo wasn't tailored specifically to him, and so didn't fit _quite_ right, it was clearly specially made somehow, as his range of motion seemed only restricted by what pain he could and could not force himself through and not the limits of the clothes themselves. If it was necessary, he could probably fight in this, though he hoped he wouldn't have to try.

After a moment, the messenger-fairy poked her head back in.

"Ah. You're ready. Um, shall I lead you to the dining parlor?"

"... said the spider to the fly..." Ranma mumbled from his prone position.

"Pardon?"

"It's nothing." he said, rising in a lurch and moving to the door in a jerky and pained parody of his typical graceful near-swagger. "Lead on, miss. I'm _starving_."

xxx

The young-looking mistress of the mansion sat at the head of the table, naturally. The sickly one sat nearby, picking halfheartedly at her meal, the main thrust of her attention focused on the book she was reading. Some sign of status within the household, respect, or...? Ranma, apparently, had been deemed interesting enough that he was ushered into a seat only a little further down the table, though on the opposite side of the bookworm, and the fairies were a little further still. The servants, the maid and whatever the woman who catered to the sickly girl's needs were obviously not expected to eat with their mistresses, as after seeing that the table had been properly set and prepared and that a number of fairies in maid outfits were present, the two had left the room, the maid pushing a cart with four covered meal-trays.

Ranma only had a moment to blink and realize the discrepancy in what he had seen, before the maid fairies floated down and began dishing out portions of food. Some kind of roast featured prominently, alongside soups and some pasta dish, and tea.

The young mistress seemed more intently focused on watching him eat than on eating herself. This probably should have started warning bells right away, but his first realization that anything was wrong was when he tasted the roast, and was greeted with a completely unfamiliar flavor, something that was difficult indeed, as he chewed slowly.

"You probably don't want to swallow that." The fairy warned, quickly and sharply, before directing her attention back to her meal as red eyes narrowed in her direction.

That, really, was all it took for things to click in Ranma's head, to draw together and make a perfect, horrible sense. His jaw froze in mid-motion, as he wavered on whether or not to spit the mouthful out entirely. After a long moment, he swallowed, with a sense of some sort of finality to the action, and immediately reached for the tea instead of taking another bite, in an automatic attempt to wash the flavor out of his mouth.

The tea was mingled uniformly with the dreadfully familiar coppery tang and flavor of blood.

His eyes closed for a moment as he set the cup down, and he took a moment to resign himself to the truth. Then he opened them and, very calmly and without hesitation, took another bite.

Remilia's amusement was very nearly palpable.

"You know what this is, right?" the fairy hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

"Yes." Ranma said softly, with just the slightest hint of bitterness and shame coloring the word before he forced it away. "Yes... I know. But all the same, I need food to heal, as well as just sleep. And... not eating... it won't change the fact that this person is dead, or somehow miraculously bring them back. I've already begun traveling down a slick precipice, with my arrangement with Suika. This... is just a little further down that path. And I wouldn't want to offend the mistress of the house... in my current condition, anyway."

By now, Remilia was no longer bothering to disguise her chuckles, and Ranma took a moment to send a dark glower her way, still eating.

"Hey... little mistress. I'll take a lot, before I start to really hate someone. Just this, won't be enough. But... I hope you don't expect me to just forgive you, either."

"Oh? Has my little joke _upset_ you? What a shame. But... what makes you think I intend to ask forgiveness? More, what do you think you could possibly _do_ about it?" She said, savoring every word with cruel amusement.

Ranma's arm blurred, and there was a slight flash as the butterknife in it was launched, fast enough to bury itself in stone. Remilia plucked it out of the air, directly in front of her face, with all the casual ease of brushing aside a bothersome fly, her amused leer not shifting in the slightest...

And when she moved her hand again, Ranma was no longer occupying his seat.

"So..." Ranma said softly, leaning against the back of Remilia's chair, his breath tickling the back of her neck. "You're driven by curiosity, and the desire to amuse yourself, no matter the expense to others. Well, then. Here's an interesting question for you to think about, Little Mistress. When I threw the knife... what was I thinking? Was I making a statement, knowing that you were fast enough to catch it with no harm done? Or was I hoping you wouldn't? Think about that for a while, okay? Because you know... it's the injured and trapped beasts, which are the most dangerous."

Ranma stood, and limped calmly back to his seat, refusing to show the pain he was in from the stresses the speed technique had placed on his already battered body, and even managed to sit down and begin eating again before Remilia finally erupted into near-hysterical laughter.

"Wine!" She demanded, finally lifting her own fork and waving it imperiously at the gathered fairies. "Bring wine, and cakes, and whatever our _interesting_ guest may wish! It's only right to display a proper hospitality, is it not?"

At her side, Patchouli turned the page in her book, and slowly carved off a small mouthful of roast as she read.

xxx

"You handled that... reasonably well." She said, having waited outside the parlor for Ranma to leave. "Most humans... would not react with such casual aplomb, to such a discovery. If I had to grade it... yes. Sixty three. On a ninety six point scale, of course."

She paused to violently cough into one hand, and Ranma considered the frank appraisal.

"Eh... most of the time, I wouldn't have been shy about what was going through my head either. But then, I've got a healthy set of self-preservation instincts sometimes, and I'm not going to be completely fighting fit until tomorrow, anyway. Even if it was just one-on-one, can't afford to pick a fight with someone who can keep that gatekeeper in line without thinking much of it. And with you sitting right there the whole time... difference between picking a fight and just begging to have your head stomped in. If I had to guess, your thing would be magic?"

Ranma waited expectantly, and got a brusque nod, along with a slight frown for having her abilities summed up so simply.

"Yeah. Sure you know all _kinds_ of nasty things to do to people, there. I'd have to focus on taking you out of action first, and somehow I really doubt that she'd make things that easy on me. Not to mention, if things started dragging out, I might have to deal with longer and longer odds... that maid, your demon-lady, the dragon gatekeeper again, not to mention whoever that fourth tray of food was going to..."

For a brief moment, Patchouli stopped breathing entirely, then resumed. Ranma only barely caught it, but took note of the reaction all the same.

"It's just a bad idea all around. It would make me think twice if I was in top shape, no way I'm going to pull a stunt like that right after being beaten unconscious once today already. Until I can breathe without it hurting again, I'll just take whatever I have to."

"I might reconsider such a position, were I you." Patchouli warned. "The majority of what ensures your safety within these walls is the interest Remilia has taken in you, and much of that is from how you react when pressed. Simply become a doormat and endure her abuse, and her interest will wane... and you may find yourself gracing our table again."

"Huh..." Ranma considered that for a moment, then frowned. "Good point. Still, I'm leaving in the morning. It's not like things could go wrong that fast."

"... Leaving? Are you?"

Patchouli began to chuckle raspily, but broke off midway into a wheezing cough. Even so, her vague amusement at his declaration was more than clear.

"Ah... you don't really understand. Remilia... she has taken note of you. Finds you... _interesting_. You've already pointed out that you can't just fight your way free of this situation. What..." She paused to cough again. "... What on earth... makes you think that leaving this mansion... will be so simple for you?"

xxx

A.N.

Okay. Geeze. That letter takes up... what, a third of this chapter, more or less? SO HUGE. Makes me kind of want to extend this chapter further and further, to make it more proportional or something, but on the other hand that is just the most perfect stopping point... hah... well, I guess it'll do for now. Anyway, you have Cinnamon-Musk backstory now! Yeah, like I said, not exactly sweet little puppies pissing rainbows. Man, I kind of feel for Herb, too. Catastrophically screws up cursing a monkey such that he curses himself, then gets_ locked_, wanders all over the damn place trying to find a way to at the very least get 'un'locked, finds it but immediately gets his pride and sense of automatic superiority trampled to hell and back by some rude little punk he locked a little while back, and _then_. Then, he starts to think about things he never thought about before, like if it's so horrible for a human to be cursed, why would a _dragon_, which would automatically be superior to just about every human in everything ever, be _happy_ about cursing itself, even for a human that was more or less its equal? So, letters get exchanged, and 'Hey, yeah, you know the facts that you've based just about your whole existence around as prince of the musk? Total bullshit. In fact, rather than being descended from the line of a heroic near-diety, _here's what actually went down_.'... Yeah, way to shatter the poor guy's mind. Still, that's what the story required, so TORMENT TIME, GO!

Had to think a while how I was going to portray the devil mansion, but I'm thinking I like the way it turned out. You may have guessed this, but this whole bit here is less 'carefree character development filler times' like Alice's house was, and more 'HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT, HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE!'. This is because while Alice used to be human relatively recently, (also, she was a lot younger, just assume there's a different time-flow between gensokyo and makai or something), I'm not sure any of the SDM were ever human at all. Well, yeah, technically Meiling, with the curse. And I think that vampirism is still the whole contagious, transmitted by bite thing? Maybe? So, Flan and Remi _miiiight_ have been human, hundreds of years ago, unless this is the type of vampirism where they can have kids, and so they might have just been born into it. But, wait, that never made sense before, and why would they stop aging just pre-puberty in that case? *Slams head into wall trying to work it out* ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW WHAT? WHO CARES! After 3-4 centuries, I'm just going to say you may as well never have been human in the first place, or something along those lines. Or maybe they were just twisted even beforehand, or whatever.

Also, plot point I _really want_ to work in somehow, but I'm not sure whether or not I can manage. Sakuya was/is 'Jack' the Ripper, maybe other historical serial murderers. Chew over that one, peoples. The reason she never got caught? She can _stop time_, murder people, wash her clothes or whatever, and seamlessly restart time such that she has an alibi. Catch _that_. Well, without being an absurdly powerful vampire, anyway.


	13. Chapter 13

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Keine-_

_Ran into someone interesting not long ago. Was wondering if you could tell me a little about him._

_-Mokou_

_Mokou,_

_You know that I don't use my powers like that without very good reason. Wait. Is this person the one who stepped in to rescue Kimi-chan before you got there?_

_Keine_

_Keine-_

_Maybe. Why? Who's Kimi?_

_-Mokou_

_Mokou,_

_By now, I should know better than to expect you to remember the names of people who's lives you save. Do the words 'Muscle Kamen' ring a bell? Kimi-chan was already a little boisterous even before then, but recently all those qualities have become magnified beyond belief. She doesn't walk anywhere if she can run full out, she won't speak normally if she can yell something at the top of her lungs, she usually stands on top of something or someone and poses while she's yelling, she's started wearing a kabuki demon mask and jumping in to join fistfights with older boys... Her father is terribly amused by this new phase of hers, but her mother is not happy, and has gone out of her way to make the rest of the village equally unhappy in an effort to get Kimi under control so that, and I quote, 'she doesn't ruin her prospects for marriage'. Given that there's only one village here, and Kimi is already the mayor's daughter, I can't imagine any way she could marry further up unless Yukari happens to bring in someone who happens to be carrying a sack full of diamonds, but there you have it. The whole situation is like an anthill that's been kicked over. So I still won't intrude upon his privacy, but if we meet I may well kill him for starting this whole mess._

_Keine_

_Keine-_

_BAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHA. That's the funniest thing I've heard about in decades. And yeah, that's him._

_Mokou_

xxx

Ranma had decided to begin his escape plan sensibly enough, by taking stock of what tools he had to hand, and essentially checking over the inventory of his ki-pockets.

It had been quite the surprising venture.

Yukari had, apparently, been fooling around with his gaps. While there was still a small backpacks worth of things he recognized- his camping equipment, blanket, a few cooking utensils and whatnot... almost all the food and expensive booze that he'd stored away before arriving in Gensokyo was simply no longer there. Compounding that was an awful lot of things that suddenly _were_ there, exponentially beyond what he'd believed his carrying capacity to be. For the most part, it was a big, random mess of junk.

To start, there was a big pile of weaponry. Admittedly, not a bad use of space, as most of it was throwing implements of some kind or another, and he might actually use an axe or heavy hammer at some point, though not for fighting, but some of it was simply bizarre. Who would want a taser painted pale pink, with Hello Kitty etchings? How on earth, for example, were you supposed to use a pair of small chainsaws, attached to each other with a short length of chain, without accidentally cutting your own legs off? And that was one of the more _sensible_ looking devices. There was also a large, rusty iron maiden, which he'd tentatively put in the 'weapon' pile, despite not having the slightest idea of how to use such a thing offensively, simply because he didn't want to start a pile of things for the purpose of hurting people that couldn't actually fight back anymore. Fortunately, it was the only torture device he'd noted so far.

There were at least a half dozen street signs, and a small lamp post. They looked like they'd just been casually torn out of the street, concrete still clinging to their bases, and Ranma could almost imagine all the traffic accidents caused by them not being where they were supposed to be. There was a motorcycle, with most of a tank of gas, and keys still in the ignition. The leather seat was still warm... Ranma tried, and failed, not to imagine Yukari plucking the machine out from beneath a half drunk rider, and the extreme, although brief, surprise that would follow. He was almost relieved when he found the very surprised rider had been stuffed in there as well, although he was less pleased to discover that he was wearing a ski-mask, had a large, bulging sack with a dollar symbol painted on it, and was armed with a pistol.

After a moment of reflection had passed, and the man had gone for his gun, Ranma decided to knock him out and stuff him back into non-space right away. He couldn't exactly just allow him to run off and get himself eaten by the household, and the man didn't seem in a listening sort of mood. Even if he was, Ranma wasn't sure how to explain 'you've been kidnapped by powers beyond your understanding, who are probably going to try to eat you' without sounding absolutely crazy, which wouldn't exactly help his case. And even though the sack was stuffed full of other people's wallets and jewelry... he probably didn't deserve that fate. So he was safer, probably, even though Yukari could probably pluck him back out any time she felt like it if she was feeling peckish. If Ranma managed to escape the manor on his own, he'd set the man loose a little ways away and hope for the best, and if he couldn't then it wasn't like some random thug had any hope of getting away himself.

There was a robot maid. No, that needed to be corrected. There was _most_ of a robot maid, possibly unfinished, but more likely to have taken significant battle damage of some kind, as her eyes kept moving to focus on him as sparks flew out of the holes in her body and she leaked oil, mouthing something at him and struggling weakly, single remaining hand clawing outwards in his direction. It was either pleas for help, or demands that he get over there so she could rip his lungs out, he wasn't sure which. He wasn't that good at lip-reading to begin with, and his french was horrible. The next thing he found was a large tarp and, after a moments thought, he wrapped the french robot maid in it and stuffed her back in non-space with the burglar.

The rest was just an eclectic mess of junk, lending credence to Ranma's theory that Yukari had just decided to stuff things she didn't know what to do with at the moment into his hidden-weapons technique. Books in languages he couldn't read, covered in dust, knicknacks and conversation pieces of all sorts... the occasional animal skull and gold brick... useless, random crap, the lot of it.

As he considered one of the books, which looked to be wrapped in human skin, Patchouli entered without so much as coughing to announce her presence, mouth open to say something. Then she paused, blinked slightly, and snatched the book out of Ranma's hands.

"You don't need this." She rasped softly, already flipping through and scanning the interior.

"I don't even know what that is."

"Obviously, or you would have most likely tried to use it yourself or destroyed it." Patchouli coughed quietly into one hand, and Ranma shrugged, turning to pack the rest of the stuff back into his sleeves.

"... Where did you get this anyway?" She asked, after a minute. Then, after glancing up, she frowned and continued with "And where did all those other things go?"

"To the first, Yukari, I think. If not, I don't know. And for the second, I put them away."

"Where?" She insisted.

"... Hidden weapons technique." He said, deciding it couldn't be too much trouble to explain. "Um... well, just for comparison, is there a magical way of opening a hole in the air to a small space that doesn't actually exist, where you can store things until you need them, and the hole itself doesn't really exist until you need to put something in or take it out?"

Patchouli stared. Then she frowned. Then she started muttering rapidly under her breath, and Ranma only caught a few words here and there, such as 'trans-phasic', 'parallel shift along the third hyper-axis', and a frequent 'no, no, that would just explode'. After a few minutes of this rapid, jargon-laced muttering, she blinked and broke off into a fit of coughing.

"It is... theoretically feasible." She allowed, eyes focusing on him once more, as he slipped the last trinket, an egg the size of his fist made out of carved iron, into a pocket.

"Yeah, okay. Because that's what I do, kind of, only substituting martial arts for magic."

"_How_?" She snapped irritably, eyes narrowing at him. "The logistics alone... it would require a ritual of sixteen hours length, with a seventeen-pointed sealing diagram surrounding a classical hexagram, and be magically draining enough to render eight average magicians comatose for a week. It's possible, but ludicrously infeasible."

"... Would you believe that I mostly just stabbed the same spot in the air until it left a hole?" Ranma answered, not quite meeting her eyes.

"No. And I'd set you on fire for lying to me." She immediately replied.

"... Then... it's a... _very _good thing that that's... not _at all_ how it works." Ranma said shiftily, still desperately looking anywhere but at Patchouli's eyes. "No, it's... it's _not at all_ that... not in any way, shape, or form. I _most definitely_ didn't just stab a hole in reality with my ki. I actually learned the hidden weapons technique in some other, totally logically sound and reasonable way, and... uh, and I'll tell you how I did it, uh... just... just as soon as I, uh... remember?" He offered weakly.

Patchouli just stared at him.

"You... stabbed a hole. In the air." She said, slowly. "With... your ki."

Ranma carefully didn't confirm or deny this statement, instead finding something very interesting to stare at in the pattern of the wallpaper.

"I... I think I may actually hate you." Patchouli seemed to realize aloud, eyes unfocused and staring into nothing.

"... Sorry?"

"Or maybe I just hate the way my brain aches, trying to comprehend how the things you do work." Her eyes focused back on him. "Either way, I'm going to set you on fire now."

"WHOA, whoa, whoa. It's, uh... not that I don't understand where you're coming from with this, but... could you, I don't know... just stab me with something instead? And maybe let me take off these clothes first? I kind of like them, and don't want them to be ruined."

"... That's acceptable." Patchouli decided, then waited patiently as he struggled out of the tux. Once finished, she snapped her fingers, and a chunk of rock shaped like a boar spear was suddenly pinning Ranma to a wall, feet slightly off the ground, like some deranged butterfly collector turned serial murderer's latest victim.

"... thanks." Ranma rasped dryly, only a little sarcastic, having weighed this against burns over most of his body, and ruined clothes and hair, and found that he still came out ahead.

"It was my pleasure."

Patchouli turned and started to leave, then paused.

"Oh, yes. I came to ask if you were interested in a nightcap in the library..."

She hesitated, and considered the way Ranma had braced himself against the wall, slowly and deliberately inching the spear out as blood trickled out of the hole. He paused to gasp in a breath, then broke off the shaft and twisted it around behind himself to use as a lever. With a grunt, he popped free of the wall and collapsed to his knees, coughing up blood.

"... I'll assume not." She said, blandly. "Perhaps tomorrow night?"

"If I'm still here by then, yeah, sure." He rasped, carefully wiggling the stone blade out of his body.

"Excellent." She declared, with a complete absence of any excitement. "I suppose I'll see you at breakfast, then. Assuming you don't die of bloodloss in the night."

"Heh... if just this were enough to kill me, I'd be long dead." Ranma affirmed, rising up with a slight wobble and digging through his empty clothes for bandages.

Patchouli didn't answer, instead giving an unnerving little half-smile as she turned and left the room. Ranma tried to ignore it as he wrapped the bandages, and a thin wisp of mist blew in through the window as he fell backwards onto the bed.

"... Having fun?" Suika whispered into his ear.

"You can talk." Ranma observed dryly, eying the wisp as it swirled and gained just enough defining features to be identifiable as Suika, if she were a tiny cloud. Which she currently was, and smirking at him. "Ah... in the past couple of days, I've lost a night of sleep, had my body frozen almost completly solid, thawed, had the crap beaten out of me by a woman that used to be a dragon, nearly got set on fire, was just stabbed clean through, and every minute I spend here makes it a little more likely that I'll be killed and eaten."

He grinned widely.

"I'm _loving every second_. Well, except for the eating-people thing. But I have even odds that sooner or later you'd get me too drunk to remember which pot was which, and that would have happened anyway, so it isn't the horrific, mind-destroying experience it could be."

"I guess that's true." Suika whispered back, her voice the merest breath of wind. "Well, enjoy yourself, then. But keep in mind, I can rescue you at any time, if you need it. If it looks like you'll die, I'll step in. I'm not through with you yet."

Without a further word, she dissolved back into formless mist and dispersed so thinly that she was completely invisible.

"... Thanks." Ranma said, deciding that it was a decent plan B, anyway. Maybe C.

xxx

Well past midnight, the door slowly creaked open, a pale beam of light flickering inwards from candles set in the hallway's ornamental wall-sconces.

Remilia paused in the doorway, leering inwards at her prey. She was a light eater... a little bit of blood going missing in the night, well, it wouldn't cause her guest any significant problems now would it? And if the slight drain did prove too much, on top of his injuries, why then her interest in him had been misplaced from the very beginning, and better to get that out of the way early, rather than find greater disappointment later.

She inhaled deeply through her nose, savoring the faint, enthralling scent of a victim waiting to happen. Certainly, her senses were not the supernaturally proficient sort that could track a specific human three hundred miles through a driving rain, but they were markedly above human average despite being functionally useless for hunting. Still, it only took a little... she may not even be able to follow the faint trail through the hallways of her mansion, as Flandre could if she wished. In a single room, however, where her prey spent any significant amount of time... the smell _lingered_, thick and heavy like a shroud of incense.

Licking delicately at the tip of one fang, she could almost _taste_ the sweet warmth flowing through his veins. She stepped forward, almost gliding as she stalked smoothly over to his bedside, ignoring the pair of fairies who had opted to sprawl out over cushions rather than find rooms of their own.

Yes... it was thick here, tinged with spilled blood. A wound had opened in bed, perhaps? No matter. She took a moment to deeply inhale the fragrance once more, exulting in the heady intoxication and building anticipation of her bloodlust, eyes almost closed and nearly shivering with a physical delight.

Then red eyes snapped open and seemed to glow with an inner fire as her mouth gaped wide, white fangs almost sparkling in the dim light. In the same motion, she snatched the coverings away and lunged into the strike, jaws hungrily seeking an unsuspecting throat.

After a long moment, she rose, and spat out a feather, glowering down at the artistically collected pillows and cushions, arranged properly enough to, in the dim light, almost completely mimic a casually sprawled out sleeper.

Outside, heels balanced carefully on a half-inch wide jutting ledge of bricks above the window, Ranma, having been awake since the first creak of the door, listened calmly as Remilia snarled in almost animalistic fury, hissing like... almost like a cat, he shuddered, infuriated by the unexpected escape of the mouse it had been toying with. After a moment her grumbling died down, and his keen ears made out footsteps.

And then she leaned out of the window.

"You can't escape." She said in a perfectly conversational tone, and his heart nearly stopped in his chest.

A tense moment passed, but she didn't continue out the window, or say anything more... just stared out over the moonlit grounds. Either she knew he was there, and was just humoring him in not looking... or she honestly had no idea where he was.

And would continue not knowing, as long as she didn't look up. Oh, he hoped she didn't look up. He was in no position to climb further, using the umi-sen-ken in this position would create enough noise that she would certainly hear, so if she looked... the only thing he could think of doing was to jump right down and tackle her four or five stories into the ground. Not only would that be unpleasant in and of itself, but it would almost definitely lead to a fight that he was in no condition to pick.

Of course, he could always just let the little vampire drink his blood, except no way in hell.

"... You can't get away." She eventually continued. "This entire mansion is my dominion... no matter where you try to hide, sooner or later I'll root you out. So run. Run and hide. Because the more you struggle... the more _satisfying_ it will be for me when I finally taste your throat."

She chuckled darkly, seeming for a moment to ooze predatory intent from every fiber of her being, then, almost painfully slowly, leaned back inside and walked slowly to the door.

A minute passed in terse silence before Ranma finally remembered to breathe, still uncertain. Had she known he was there or not?

"Aaaagh..." he groaned softly, hand moving up to his recent impalement wound, thankfully not coming away red. "All this stress isn't helping me heal. Tch."

He stared outwards, then slowly closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift back into slumber, waiting patiently for sunrise.

xxx

Although it would very much surprise those who knew her to learn this, Nabiki Tendo could actually be an exceptionally generous person, when the mood took her.

It wasn't at all that she was the sort of naturally kind and giving person that her elder sister was, either. No, it was almost entirely out of a sense of empowerment. Needing something, and not being able to get it yourself... that, clearly, was a sign of the most pitiful and pathetic sort of weakness. Being financially secure enough to simply give things away, by contrast, could only be a display of one's own power and superiority.

Nobody Nabiki knew ever so much as complained of being a few yen short of something in her presence, having long since learned the foolishness of it. It was bad when she overheard, and offered a loan with some staggering level of interest tacked on. Worse, by far the worse, was when she heard, and smiled, and simply offered the money, with _no repayment required_.

Woe to any fool who agreed to it, because the very moment that Nabiki so much as gave away a single yen coin, the unlucky recipient became hers, forever. There was no escape... every time Nabiki's eyes happen on them, they would seem to flash with inner amusement, and a uniquely smug cast would take over her features. At every turn, she would engage them in conversation, taking the superior sort of tone typically reserved for mentally incompetent homeless vagrants, and always, always, the conversation would somohow turn to mentioning that Oh! Nabiki just _happened_ to have a few hundred extra yen of spare change, and if they _needed_ anything... She would never spare any opportunity to remind them that they owed her a debt, however minor, taking the most savage glee in rubbing their faces in it.

As of yet, nobody had managed to kill their sense of shame enough to be unaffected by this and simply use her as a free money dispenser, although in all frankness Genma had never thought to make such an attempt.

Most likely, it was at least partially due to this habit of warped generosity that, when the police had suddenly arrived at the Tendo's doorstep to report the sudden discovery of Happosai's cadaver, she immediately stepped up to plate and took full control of the conversation.

It wasn't easy. She had to go out of her way to keep everyone else in the house distracted, lest they blurt something out without thinking, whether through Kasumi's sort-of obliviousness, Akane's habit of talking in anger, or the odds that one of the fathers would half-drunkenly declare it a joyous day, now that the accursed Master had finally kicked the bucket. Most importantly, she could not allow any of them to accidentally drop the most crucially important tidbit... that this very morning, Akane had belted the old man with a frying pan to launch him clear across the city. Without the surrounding details of the incident, and probably even with them, Authority would not look kindly on such an action.

She did an excellent job of it too, diverting the harshest of the police's suspicion, long enough that a combined report of the scene and autopsy arrived and Akane was thankfully exonerated of the guilt of murder, though the police weren't aware of it.

It was uncanny. Happosai had landed in the middle of a glassworks factory somehow, and ricocheted off of the edge of a vat of bubbling liquid glass and the wall to smash through a display of seventeen large windowpanes set back to back. From there, he had bounced out the door and across the street, through a mime's display of Martial Art's Juggling, complete with not just knives and running chainsaws but lit sticks of dynamite, bounced again up and over a fence topped with barbed wire and into a junkyard full of half-rabid, starving guard dogs. Fortunately for him, he'd impacted square in the middle of a beaten up old trampoline, still functional, if only barely, which had bounced him right back over the fence and into the street, where he'd rolled across and through the wheels of unconcerned traffic, and came to a stop against the outer wall of the glass factory. After a moment, he had calmly risen, dusted himself off, and begun to walk away as though nothing had ever happened.

He'd apparently made it only a dozen feet or so before suddenly collapsing and dying of a completely unrelated heart attack. None of the onlookers had called emergency in time to save him, because stunned by the aerial display as they had been, they initially had concluded that they were on set at the filming of some new movie. By the time anyone had figured out what was actually happening, the unusually spry old man was already gone.

Nabiki had shaken her head with wonderment at the series of events. Still... this was Happosai they were talking about. Honestly, she hadn't expected the old fart ever _would_ die... but if she'd had to guess how it would happen, it would have been a lot like that.

xxx

A.N.

It suddenly occurs to me that I forgot to tack one of these at the end of Scarlet History. Huh. Well, I'll mention it in brief here, then. Initially, I was going to use that as the start-up 'written' thingy for this chapter... and then I got a good look at it. It was waaaay too long. Seriously, these chapters rarely pass the five-thousand word mark, ending notes included. That thing was... what, almost two thousand all on its own? That's half a chapter right there. A whole half! Nothng but the intro thing! No, that wasn't going to work. Yeah, I guess I could have tried to condense it, but I actually bothered to hit wikipedia up for british history in order to get the years right. So, yeah, screw that. I had it the way I wanted it. Instead, I just cut it and made it a little complete, self-contained story of it's own.

Seriously, people, it has pirates loyal to Remilia going around and plundering on a ship called the 'Scarlet Cross'. What's not to like in that? You should really read it, if only to make note of the non-canon backstories I'm using for the SDM. Although, yeah, not completely sure they actually _have_ canon backstories, and I actually did very little characterization, but screw it, you're getting that here. Also, I entered it into a regular writing-contest thing at the maidens of the kaliedoscope forums. So, eh, yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Onward to the actual story, here, which I should have already been writing notes for rather than for a different one entirely.

Yeah, Meiling could probably experiment around to see what happens with the Kettle before actually using it but, you know, that would require her to either go to china herself or send for it and explain why she wanted it and who she was, and she might have to get permission from Remilia to actually leave her post and go off somewhere, and then there's all the experimenting to do before she actually tries using the water herself and whatnot... and, despite what you've seen, while she's very serious while 'on-duty', she's actually really damn lazy when off of it, and it actually _has_ been like a thousand years since she was anything but the Youkai she is now. Sure, she knows, intellectually, that she was a dragon once, but she really _can't_ remember what it was like, and damned if she's going through all that effort now when she could take a nap in a comfortable chair by a hearth fire instead. That's longer to explain and justify in the middle of a fight though, so instead, Ranma got 'risk' bullshit. So now you know. Ranma would understand perfectly, I think... well, uh, assuming he was locked as a she for a thousand-ish years. And was still alive. Probably.

Moving on, Ranma's stuff. Yukari's been screwing around again. That's... that's really all I have to offer, there. Sorry. Some of it may prove to be Chekhov's Gun's, some may just be red herrings. We'll see, once I've decided which is which. Also, I can now legitimately use that excuse for having him pull something completely new, exactly what the situation calls for but never seen before, out of his ass at the last second _buuuut_ I'll try not to play that card if I have literally any other choice available.

Literary theft: may well actually be a habit of Magicians in general, not just Marisa. Though, she probably snatches a lot more than just books. Seriously, I think if Patchy was _really_ upset about it, she'd actually go and do something about it. Marisa's house, at least, would probably not survive.

Also, she _miiight_ be kind of a yandere, but at this point that's really just par for the course of the SDM.

Remilia's traditional vampiric assault, handled in not quite so traditional a fashion. Eh, overall, I just really enjoyed writing this chapter.

And yes. Ranma slept upright, balanced on a half-inch wide ledge of brick.


	14. Chapter 14

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear Mother,_

_I have recieved your message regarding the untimely demise of Grandmaster Happosai. I must say, however, that after the initial shock of the news wore off, I found myself entirely disinclined to believe, and have concluded that this is a ruse of some sort, although to what purpose I am not certain. I am afraid I cannot disclose my reasoning for this belief, so I merely ask that you trust that I believe it to be firm and valid, and further, that you not mention to anyone the possibility of the Grandmaster's continued existence. I may not be aware of what his plan is, but I would prefer not to become involved and accidentally ruin it._

_On another note, Suika has found the vast majority of her time and attention occupied with some massive scheme, the details of which are unimportant. I have been much enjoying the free time offered by this situation, and have returned to training intensively. In the course of this, I have recently come across a martial artist who I believe to have been at one point Herb's ancestor, and have been invited to the manor of an aristocratic vampiress, which in and of itself has proven already to be excellent training._

_During the daylight hours she is, for the most part, a polite and accomodating host, although I feel that some of the ways she arranges for her amusement are in poor taste. Naturally, however, once the sun has set it must be taken into consideration that she is only capable of deriving sustenance from human blood, preferably drawn direct by her own fangs. She is capable, it seems, of subsiding upon blood drawn and stored for an indeterminate period prior to ingestion, however, my presence within her home seems to be an all but irresistable temptation. Much the same as, I imagine, if Genma were to invite in some manner of being in which the finest of plum wines flowed through its veins rather than blood._

_I am currently writing this as I watch the sun rise over the eastern horizon, having evaded the young mistress's assault for the night, somehow. Soon, I shall be expected to make my appearance at the morning breakfast, and can only hope that the pattern will continue, and that she considers it more of an amusing diversion than any matter of particular seriousness. Given the near-effortlessness of the thrashing I recieved at the hands of her gatekeeper, I cannot imagine being able to fight her off without calling upon Suika's aid._

_No matter. I intend to escape somehow in any case, with any luck I will not remain a second night._

_Your son,_

_Ranma._

_P.S. Yes, mother, they're pleasing to the eyes. However, I still have no intention of sleeping with them. As well, there are many maids, who seem to average roughly one to two feet in height, which would, I assume, make dalliances difficult even were I so inclined._

Ranma paused, considering, and decided not to bring up Patchouli, her assistant, or the head maid as yet. What his mother didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

xxx

Breakfast had gone well. Patchouli had been vaguely surprised that his neck had been unmarred, but hadn't brought the matter up. Throughout the meal, Remilia behaved as though she hadn't actually tried to attack him last night, and Ranma pretended as though he was none the wiser to the fact that she wanted to rip open his jugular and guzzle down everything that came out. All in all, that had really been the best he could have hoped for.

Shortly afterward, he decided to make his first escape attempt. Nothing particularly thought out or elaborate. He simply walked, confidently and in no particular rush, out the front door and down the path towards the gate.

He made it about halfway there before the maid appeared, smiling widely. He wasn't sure how she did it. There was no hint of her arrival, she hadn't hidden herself through any means he was capable of detecting... she had simply not been there one moment, and then, less than a second later, she was there.

Smiling.

He didn't like that smile. It was... wrong, somehow. Too wide, maybe, or perhaps there was an unsettling curve to it. It wasn't dishonest... rather, it was a smile that was _too_ honest, somehow. A condescending sort of grin, the type shown when watching an infant's futile struggle and confusion about no longer being within the womb. The sort of smile a butcher might wear, while eyeing a particularly plump hog and calculating bacon yield against food intake...

Ranma hated that smile.

"Are you going somewhere?" Sakuya asked politely, somehow managing to convey a serious sense of danger without actually hinting at it in any way, through body language or tone.

"... Hm? I was hoping to have a discussion with that gatekeeper." Ranma half-lied, writing up the attempt as a loss, fairy on his shoulder fluttering her wings in agitation but not bothering to speak aloud.

"Is that so? I suppose that is reasonable enough. As it happens..." Sakuya took a moment to display a basket that Ranma was _sure_ she hadn't been carrying a moment ago. "... I was just about to deliver the supplies for a mid-morning tea. There should be more than plenty to go around, and as the post of Gatekeeper is currently largely ornamental, it should be no trouble to fetch her back within the walls for you."

"That... would be wonderful. Thank you." Ranma replied, teeth grit as she led him back and off the path, to a small gazebo, before calling a fairy maid and sending her off to fetch Meiling, not allowing him to leave her presence for even the briefest of moments.

It... wasn't like he had expected this to work. Even so, to simply be so completely and casually shut down, not even able to reach the wall... it was galling. He seethed, quietly, until Meiling entered the gate, and composed himself as she came close.

"You wanted to talk with me?" She asked in a bored, uninterested tone.

"... Mostly, I just wanted to ask if you had free time in your schedule for another match soon." He half-lied again. "It shouldn't be more than..." He paused and extended his estimate, wary of the maid's ears. "... a week, at most, before I'm in full fighting condition again."

"Really? Impressive. I would have estimated months of recovery for you."

"... I heal fast." Ranma answered tightly, not quite sure if she was actually praising him, or mocking him for being a fragile human.

"I suppose you would almost have to." She allowed, watching as Sakuya precisely poured tea into china cups "In any case, whenever you wish, I'll be more than pleased to beat you senseless again."

The conversation continued much along this line as the better part of an hour passed, mingling small-talk and exceptionally polite yet biting jabs. After the first few minutes, Ranma had started to enjoy the banter, in a way he never had before. It was like a battle of words, only without any of the genuine spite that would bubble to the surface if he tried such a thing in Nerima.

And, since it was all just pointless small-talk, rather than desperately trying to find a way to cajole pertinent information from the guard, such as weaknesses or escape routes, it seemed to greatly bore and irritate the maid. That was always a plus. In fact, he almost genuinely regretted it when the tea had all gone and the chat wound to a close.

"If that's all, then I should get back to my post." Meiling said, stretching idly as she rose. She began to turn, then paused. "One thing, though. If you value your health... stay out of the basement."

A slight, momentary frown passed over Sakuya's features, and was immediately gone, almost forcing Ranma to wonder if he had imagined it.

"Hm. Shall I take you back inside, then?" She asked, pleasantly enough.

"... Yes. Of course."

xxx

The thing about the mansion was, Ranma reflected, that there was always food of some sort around. Not neccessarily always the sort of food he would want to eat, but it was always present, usually accompanied by some kind of drink. Red wine, and much of the tea, was also occasionally suspicious, but for the most part the clear drinks were trustworthy enough.

Still, he wasn't going to be having any difficulty fueling the healing process while he was here. At his best guess, given the frequent catnaps he stole through the day, he would be almost back in shape by evening, and near top form by tomorrow morning, barring anything happening in the night that required him to strain himself too much. The impalement wound would likely take longer to completely heal, but, having learned something from experience, he'd crudely stitched the front hole shut, and had the fairy deal with the rear hole, with neater and more precise stitches. On the surface, at least, the wound had mostly healed together. Internally, well, that was another story, but fortunately enough Patchouli had either missed everything important or deliberately aimed to keep from doing more than brush up against any organs, and the only issue there was pain. That was easy enough to deal with.

Before long, lunch and dinner had passed, as had brunch, afternoon tea with bagels and cheese, evening tea and wines with pastries and sweets, and a mutton sandwich with mustard that he'd made for himself as a snack at some point, after wandering through one of the kitchens in his quest to familiarize himself with the mansion interior.

It had been a fruitless effort. He'd very quickly come to suspect, the previous day, that the mansion was bigger on the inside than it was from outside, and had estimated the interior to encompass somewhere between two and three times the area it should have held. He had thought that to be a generous guess, and that it was probably a little less than that. He had thought completely wrong. After exploring on his own, he'd been forced to revise his estimation. The mansion, already particularly large when viewed from an outsider's perspective, was at least seven times larger inside, likely more than that. What that meant was that it was very easy to get lost in its windowless hallways and labyrinths of empty, dusty rooms, which the fairy did not hesitate to repeatedly berate him over as they aimlessly stumbled around.

Without fail, of course, a fairy would always come to collect them when a mealtime rolled around, no matter where they were, or if he was sleeping or not.

And so, he had found himself meeting up with Patchouli for a nightcap after all, which was apparently to consist of something called honey mead, which Remilia was apparently not at all fond of.

"... I would like to study you and your abilities." She seriously declared, without so much as a gentle lead-in to the request.

Rather than the unhesitating and resounding 'No' that he wanted to answer with, Ranma paused a moment and decided to answer with a little more diplomacy, in the hope of preventing more punctures, which would each extend his healing time.

"Have you asked your gatekeeper about this, too?" He asked instead. "She can also control and manipulate Ki. She'd probably be a better focus for any long-term study... I don't intend to be here that long."

"She's never displayed any abilities as interesting as your... pockets." She replied, waving the question off disinterestedly.

"Just because she hasn't shown anything doesn't mean there's nothing interesting there." Ranma argued. "After all, I could probably figure out more ways to use Hidden Weapons in a fight than the traditional pulling hidden weapons out, but it would probably take a lot of thought before I came up with something concrete, and not all techniques are good for the same situations. She could know any number of interesting techniques that she's just never used where you can see."

"... Point." Patchouli acknowledged, calmly taking a sip of mead. "However, it in no way answers my request."

"I'm going to have to decline, I'm afraid. Even if I end up staying a little longer than I expect... well, I really don't do well with being studied like a lab rat. It's a long story, about someone pointing out my bruises disappearing faster than normal, this one doctor that got too interested for my own good, and... well, it all goes downhill from there."

Patchouli blinked, slowly and a long few moments passed as she considered the refusal. Then she shifted herself subtly, and drew her lip into a slight pout.

"Really? Are you sure? If you agreed, Koa and I would be _ever_ so eager to... show our _appreciation_." She...

Well, Ranma had to give her some credit, as she was probably _trying_ for a breathy, sensual purr. Given that she spent more time coughing than talking, though, what it had come out as was a slight variation of her typical rasp. Given that she looked perfectly prepared to fall down and die at the slightest exertion, Ranma found the display even less appealing than he normally would.

"... Really, now? Really?" He sighed, rubbing at a temple. "Is everyone I meet going to try to seduce me into things, now?"

"That depends. Is it working?" Patchouli asked seriously, moving her arms together and leaning forward in an attempt that would probably have been slightly more effective on him if she'd been wearing something with cleavage.

"I'm involved with someone." He replied, realizing that this was quickly becoming his go-to excuse of choice, still surprised that it actually worked here. "These manacles are... sort of a symbol of that. And so... well, she might actually be thrilled, but I'm really not..." He paused for a moment, then frowned, a tidbit having just hit him. "'Koa'?"

Patchouli pointed idly at her assistant, who responded by making a facial expression that seemed to be equal parts happy grin, perverse leer, and predatory baring of teeth, seeming to suddenly ooze lust and hunger. He blinked, and took a moment to stare blankly before turning back.

"Oh. Her." He replied blandly, then picked up right where he'd left off, ignoring the assistant's incensed glare at his dismissal. "... Like I said, I'm really not interested in such offers."

"Shame." Patchouli answered dryly, seeming vaguely skeptical of his claim but willing to at least pretend she believed him, for now, and returned to draping herself exhaustedly across her chair, seeming slightly winded from all the effort. "In any case, please..." She broke off into a round of coughing, which was slow to die down, then quickly drank a mouthful more of mead after it had passed. "As I was saying, please do notify me should you recall something which might cause you to reconsider your position."

"I'll be sure to do that." Ranma agreed, immediately failing to believe there could be any such thing, despite experience warning him otherwise.

From there, things diverged once more to small talk, Ranma stalwartly refusing to ask for advice on nocturnal vampire-dodging, and Patchouli, in turn, refusing to offer any particularly helpful tips of her own volition. After a while, she yawned and Koa shifted in place, seeming perfectly prepared to begin ushering him out. No better time to draw their little meeting to a close, then.

"One last thing." Patchouli insisted on getting out, as he rose with a slight wobble, ki burning the alcohol out of his system as fast as it could manage, but not quite fast enough to entirely counter the intake. "Stay out of the basement. Remi and Sakuya won't bother to warn you about it, but if you go in, you'll probably die."

He paused, considering that, as the door swung ominously shut behind him. That was twice now, that he'd been warned away from there. Usually, he wouldn't have given such warnings a second thought, but given that he knew he was no match yet for Meiling, one-on-one, and he was confident that Patchouli could utterly destroy him if given reason, the fact that both of them were quietly worried about the idea... it was unsettling.

"So... what now?" The fairy asked.

"Now? You can go to sleep, if you want. I'm about to play cat and mouse with a vampire."

xxx

The hunt began only a few corridors down, when the faintest rustle of cloth from some distance behind clued Ranma in to the fact that he was being stalked. He paused for only a moment in an intersection and glanced back. As he had mostly expected, there was nothing there.

He sighed deeply, glanced down the hallway towards his assigned guest room, then deliberately turned and went in the opposite direction.

He had to admit, after a half hour had passed, that she was a decent stalker. She didn't seem able to sniff him out, or tell where he was by body heat or blood senses or anything like that, or the game would have ended after the first few minutes, when he'd hidden himself inside a chandelier to wait for her to pass through the room underneath. If he could just get far enough away that she couldn't see or hear him for a moment, then he could lose her, barring some fluke of chance causing their paths to cross again.

The problem was that he couldn't get that free moment. Good as he was, his focus when he's learned ninjutsu had been its combat applications more than stealth. Unlike Konatsu, he wasn't a real ninja master. No matter what he did, there was always some slight tell that gave away his position once he'd almost made his getaway, and Remilia would lock onto it like a bloodhound. A soft jingle of chandelier chains, when he jumped down. A shadow cast in the light of candles he'd forgotten to account for. Accidentally brushing against something and shifting it just the slightest bit away from where it had been when Remilia had last seen it. Little things, that wouldn't matter if you were, say, robbing a house that should be empty at the time, but made a great deal of difference in the current situation.

At some point, neither could recall when, both had begun to slowly increase in speed, until Ranma was darting about as fast as he could manage and still maintain near-silence. At some different point, the unavoidable primal terror of being a hunted prey animal had reached a critical threshhold. It was still all there, of course, and he was perfectly aware of what the result would be if he was caught, but... the sense was dull. Muted, and restrained. In absence of the rational terror he knew full well he should be undergoing, he was... actually having fun. He'd begun to enjoy being chased.

And, at some point... he'd begun to chase back. Sort of, anyway. Not actually chasing, but... no longer quite fleeing either. He'd begun to toy with Remilia, taunting and subtly mocking her efforts to follow his retreat. It wasn't just a wolf chasing a frightened rabbit anymore. Now, it had become the careful dance of a greater predator hunting a lesser one. And he found that he could live with that.

Even as there was a soft pop from his midsection, and he realized that his crude stitches had given out from the stress, and he was bleeding again, it was fine. The game would end soon. That was fine. With her tracking the smell of blood, there woul have been no escape anyway. This was it. He was through. That was...

No. No, it wasn't fine. Until the last, he had never, would never, just lie down and accept a loss. Rational thought clouded by the combination of adrenaline, pain, and dulled terror, he came to a halt in the middle of an empty parlor.

Here. Here would be as good a place as any, to stage his last stand. He held no illusions about his chances, but something within him revolted at the idea of willingly submitting, of just giving up. No. If she wanted his blood, then she would have to take it by force.

He took a pair of deep, calming breaths, ignoring the objections of his puncture, and focused himself upon the door out to the hallway. In only a few moments, Remilia would burst through, and then-

He was quite surprised, though only for a moment, when a pair of slender arms burst through the floor by his feet in a shower of wood dust and splinters, and hands latched around his ankles like wolf traps. Then, with a savage wrench, he was ripped through the floorboards without the chance to make any sound of protest.

The door swung gently open, and Remilia stood there for a long moment of silence, contemplating the fissure torn in the wood. She took a deep sniff, glanced idly around the room, then frowned and looked back down at the hole again.

"Well, that's no good." She grumbled, voice heavy with disappointment as she turned and walked back out, door swinging slowly shut behind her.

xxx

A.N. I guess this chapter is shorter than the other recent entries, but I don't care. At this point, my classes are such that you're lucky I manage to steal time to scribble out a sentence or so here and there at all. Would have put in one more section after that stopping point, but I've reached the stage of 'screw this, get it out of the way already so you can focus on other things'. I'm sure you'll forgive me.

Anyway, next chapter, Flandre interactions. This promises to be fun. And before anyone asks, Cirno is still there, taking shameless advantage of the Scarlet Mansion's hospitality to stuff her face. She didn't really do much else other than that, I'm afraid.

What else was- oh, yeah. Realized belatedly during the patchy conversation that if he's still wearing something like the heavy iron collar Suika put on him way back when, Remilia would have had issues going for the throat even if he'd been inclined to remain in bed and still. But then I remembered that the chain thing was supposed to be magic anyway, like I mentioned once in the story, and at some point they used it to make cuffs, so! Plothole-B-Gone says that yes, he's still wearing Suika's chains, symbolically if nothing else, but it irritated his neck or something so they took the collar bit off and now it's focused on the manacle-bracers that never went away. The chain is mostly reduced to a single link hanging off them, and _yes_ Ranma could probably find any number of combat uses for magic length-shifting chains, but at the moment he still deeply associates them with all of that sex, so such thoughts are going to be long in coming.


	15. Chapter 15

Away to Neverland

xxx

_My dearest beloved._

_It has been some time since we have last spoken, or even seen one another, and I must confess that this was by my own design._

_I have been on an extended tour of the countryside, in an effort to clear my head and finally put to words both my innermost thoughts and emotions._

_I have been... madly, deeply in love with you since the moment our eyes first met, and it is only now, in your absence, that I am capable of composing myself enough to confess that fact._

_I am soon to inspect a cavern that causes the rustic folk of this area some superstitious fear, so as to allay their worries. When the morning comes, I shall affix my signature and post this letter directly to you before making arrangements towards my return._

_I only pray that you return my feelings for you, such that when next we meet we may be wed with all due haste._

_Truly yours,_

Taloned, bony fingers traced over the paper, one almost delicately tracing over the letters, before they closed and at the same time crumpled and shredded the fine paper.

That done, it tossed the scrap aside and turned back to its half-devoured meal.

xxx

Ranma groaned from his landing place, muscles throbbing and the kicked up cloud of dust slowly floating down around him. Wearily, he slowly opened his eyes.

They were met with the unblinking red gaze of a brightly smiling little blonde girl.

"Hiiiiiiii~" She... well, 'chirped' was really the only word for it. By the time he started to open his mouth, she had already moved on, clearly neither interested in nor expecting an immediate reply. "You smell goood..."

Before he could respond, one of her hands had clamped around his wrist and... well, the kindest way that he could put what happened next was that she _very enthusiastically_ helped him to his feet. So entusiastically, in fact, that had he not been so personally tough and agile, and familiar with aerial maneuvering, that he suspected that the limb would have been torn entirely free from the rest of his body. As it was, his shoulder was uncomfortably wrenched by the time he came to a stop.

"Oh!" She exclaimed brightly. "You didn't break!" She continued, sounding unreasonably delighted by that fact. Ranma tried not to imagine why that would be. It was easier than he'd expected, as the barest eyeblink later, the girl had returned to wild, delighted motion, and it was all he could do to twist, spin, and flip himself about in such a way that he remained in one piece throughout it.

When he came to a stop, and his arm was released, he found himself sprawled awkwardly across a chair set across a long dining table, dimly lit by candles and set for tea. Even discounting the girl herself, a number of other chairs were... occupied, sort of. Here, a dusty skeleton leaning backwards in place, both arms lying on the floor beside its seat, a cup of congealed and murky liquid that might once have been considered tea set on the table before it. There, a woman, so recently dead that the remains hadn't yet begun to decay, blood having poured at some point out of both her open mouth and the gaping, basketball sized hole through her torso, completely covering the platter of scones and sweets she had collapsed forward onto. There, a headless body, arranged neatly and primly in all other respects save the blood and the stench of rot which he even now was realizing hung thick and heavily throughout the room.

Not every chair was filled, though many were, and most of those contained only dusty bones. He almost imagined that he could judge, from oldest on, the order in which they had come to their final rest, here, from no more than the visible state of their remains...

He belatedly realized, even as he almost automatically shifted himself to a more comfortable position, that cup of steaming... terribly red, red tea sat before him, aside a small dish of pink-tinted cake. He looked up to the head of the table, where the young... red eyed girl, had taken her seat. She had positioned herself... both gracefully and carelessly, in an uncertain state of absolute physical and mental superiority, like...

For a moment, he could almost see Remilia Scarlet's form transposed over her. But no... no, not quite. There was... uncertainty, as he had noted. An air of childish mimickry, and lack of practice with this situation, as though... well, similar to a very young child aping the mannerisms and habits of her elders, but not fully understanding...

"It's not uncommon..." The fairy murmured from near his ear. "... or rather, was not typically uncommon, for noble houses to... do away with family members that... they would prefer not to be in the general view of society. If not outright eliminating them, then... tucking them away, and keeping them in out of the way places, where they were unlikely to be disturbed... or noticed. Small secluded villas, private towers, secluded chambers and studies, attics..."

The fairy paused for a brief moment, before continuing.

"... Basements. There were many reasons for this, but the most predominant one... or at least claimed such... was madness. Not neccessarily a dangerous sort, mind you, but..."

Ranma nodded imperceptibly, eyes tracking over the many, many... clearly less _durable_ playdates the girl had found. It wasn't like he needed further reason to be wary, at this point, but he would keep it in mind.

She gave a sudden, slight start, as though having realized she had forgotten something, then leaned forward, carefully and deliberately holding her chin up with one hand, almost managing to pull off a cultivated air of casual amusement and vaguest interest, but still not... _quite_ able to set aside a certain sense of... naivetie, perhaps?

"I am Flandre Scarlet." she declared, in a tone which she only seemed to remember midway through was meant to be 'cool, with a hint of natural superiority' and not 'high-pitched, seeming to radiate innocent delight'. "And you?"

"Ranma Saotome." he briefly answered.

She nodded and imperiously waved at the cooling... food, before him.

"Eat." She said, calmly. She was smiling as she said it, but the implicit... order, demand, and qiet threat, all wrapped up in one, were plain enough to hear. He ate.

...

As expected, he found the thick and unmistakable flavor of blood to drown out any of the teas more subtle flavors. The cake, fortunately enough, was almost disgustingly sweet in comparison, enough so he could almost pretend that he didn't taste...

Previously, he'd never have thought he was capable of losing his appetite, but this was far from the first time it had happened since he entered this household. He continued to methodically eat in spite of it. When finished, he set the fork down with a soft 'clink', and Flandre started again, looking up at him with wide eyes, as though seeing him for the first time, blinking.

"... Oh! You're still moving! By this time, all the others had stopped..."

Ranma almost winced at the note of confused delight in her voice, as though she couldn't quite figure out _why_ he wasn't dead yet, but didn't feel like questioning the good fortune.

"... I'm not so fragile as that." he hedged after a moment, then almost continued on to declare that 'it would take more than just that to break me' before realizing that that could be construed as not just a challenge but an _invitation_, and firmly shut his mouth.

"Oh, oh that's great! If you can still move, then we can play! Hide and seek, manhunt, dead soldiers, murder ball.. no, we'd need more people... oh, we could play red hands!"

"... I'm noticing an... unfortunate theme, here..." Rama mumbled to himself.

"Eeee~ It'll be such fun! Let's play~"

Flandre leapt, blissful smile on her face and fingers outstretched before her like rending claws. She didn't expect him to meet her flying lunge with one of his own, tackling her out of the air, any more than she expected the sudden hailstorm of silvery knives thunking down into the table, directly below where she would have been if Ranma hadn't intervened.

He heaved himself off of her, gasping from having to so suddenly throw himself into action, in spite of his wound's complaints, and looked up. Remilia and Sakuya looked back down from above, floating near the ceiling. Sakuya had another fistful of blades already prepared for throwing, fanned out between her fingers.

"Really, now, that wasn't necessary at all." Remilia chided, smiling slightly. "Just as myself, little Flandre cannot be... _permanently_ harmed, by just a few knives."

"Call it a reflex..." he wheezed, before catching his breath. "Born of habit... from sort of similar situations. Mousse's eyesight was never that great, so he compensated by dumping a wagonload of sharp and pointy metal at his opponent. Or what he thought was his opponent. With a battle plan like that, though... well, mistakes happen." Ranma shrugged. "But really, after the... maybe sixth? Time you have to snatch or tackle someone out of the way of something like that, you don't even realize your body is moving until it's over, sometimes."

"Quaint. Sakuya, secure him."

"Milady." the maid afirmed.

Ranma didn't blink. He _knew_ he hadn't, but even so, he suddenly found himself uncomfortably held in Sakuya's arms, a begrudging bridal carry that took no thought of minding his wounds. Such speed was... unbelievable. Impossible. No, whatever it was, Sakuya wasn't acting on pure speed alone, or at the very least he would have felt himself being moved, rather than just... appearing in her arms.

"Aww... Big sister, no fair. I hadn't even started to play." Flandre complained.

"You're too rough. You'll break it before I'm done."

... Ranma couldn't say he much cared to be referred to as an 'it', but on the other hand, speaking up right now didn't seem like the greatest idea either...

"... that's right!" Flandre seemed to suddenly recall. "Big sister was playing with it, chase hunting... but I got there first! I've always been better at that..."

"...yes. That reminds me..."

Remilia _moved_, blurring down to her sister's side and kicked, the force launching the slightly smaller girl through the air and a couple chairs, scattering bones haphazardly before she impacted heavily against the wall.

"... I still have to chide you for interfering with my own playtime." Remilia finished, in a perfectly conversational tone.

Then she exploded. Completely without warning, though she seemed to have expected it, given that her expression didn't shift a bit as she erupted into a fountain of gore, head spiralling upwards for a moment, until mid-arc she dissolved further still, into bats. The bats gathered back together, fading away into a single mass, and revealing a toroughly unharmed Remilia.

"Futile." She declared. "You know full well that your fate will not allow you to destroy me fully. Your power is nothing to-"

Flandre interrupted the impending speech with a screeching lunge, and words were forgotten in exchange for bestial howls and ripping claws, as each tore the other apart, only for them to reform and continue anew.

Flandre was clearly the stronger. That much was evident, in only the first few brief moments of the battle, as every strike from her would rip or burst Remilia apart. Remilia, however... she was a little faster, reconstituted herself a little quicker, and more than that she knew _exactly_ what she was doing. Where Flandre was just attacking wildly, for the sake of ripping and crushing in and of itself, every one of Remilia's own assaults was part of a larger plan... And yes, when it came right down to it, her ow faster regeneration proved to be the critical factor, as the fight drug on, every blow of Remilia's exactly and coldly calculated, setting up a rythym, slowly, until a point came when suddenly, Flandre was spending more time regenerating than fighting. And then further, such that every time she even began to move into an attack, Remilia would swat the attempt down and deliver crushing retaliation in turn.

For minutes this continued, Flandre's attempts growing steadily weaker and more half hearted, until finally they ceased entirely and she simply lay on the ground, curled into a protective ball, pathetic threads of what had once been her clothes tattered about her prone form. Remilia's clothes hadn't fared _much_ better, but there was enough remaining to preserve at least a little of her modesty, as she stood above Flandre's form, chest heaving as she caught her breath... did vampires need to breathe, now, Ranma wondered for a moment before he ceased questioning it... then reached down and drug Flandre upwards by her throat, dangling her from one hand. Flandre sullenly refused to respond, both seeming completely uncaring about her current state of nudity.

"It hurts... little sister, every time you defy me and I'm forced to once again remind you of your place. It cuts far deeper than you realize. I _love_ you, Flandre... so... Why can't you just be a good girl and obey?"

Flandre sagged slightly, the first hint of actual surrender, and Remilia swooped in for the kill... Ranma nearly flushed, and felt like he should turn his eyes away, that he was, somehow, intruding on something private as their lips met, and Flandre seemed to slowly melt into a weak-kneed puddle of submissive obedience. Remilia shifted her hands, sliding her face away from Flandre's and down to her neck, tongue trailing... then bit. Flandre gasped... then actually began to moan softly, as Remilia drank deeply of her, re-establishing dominance and the hierarcy, as her hands... well, Ranma decided after a moment to simply studiously ignore what she was currently doing with her hands.

After a few short moments of feeding, she pulled away, face dripping with spilled blood and Flandre fully limp in her arms from the ministrations.

"... Sakuya. Escort our guest to his quarters. He will need _some_ rest tonight, I presume. After that, return to your duties."

"... Yes, milady." The maid answered, in an... almost slightly disappointed tone.

And then, with no warning or fanfare, Ranma found himself lying in bed, staring awkwardly at the ceiling above, Cirno snoring gently from somewhere nearby.

... he frowned, once more assured that whatever Sakuya had done, 'speed' hadn't played much of a part in it. Up from the basement to... whichever floor this was, he couldn't recall, and some distance away, in less than an eyeblink? No. At the very, most generous estimate, his wound would be throbbing madly in response to that.

So, then, what _was_ it?

xxx

"Sakuya? She has the ability to manipulate time and space according to her needs." Patchouli affirmed shortly after breakfast the next morning.

"..." Ranma aptly replied, before shaking it off. "You... you're _serious_. And instead of that, you want to study..."

"Sakuya's abilities, from what I have determined, appear tobe from a unique quirk of herself, therefore unduplicatable, and useless to anyone but herself. By your own admission, you duplicated that... hole technique from another, and it bears certain similarities towards... another ability which I had assumed unduplicatable, and so-"

"Oh. Yukari's thing." Ranma grumbled, one hand twitching awkwardly towards his midsection.

"... Yes. I was indeed speaking of the Yakumo, and to a far lessr extent, the Hakurei. It seems you've maid her aquaintance."

"Yes to the first, but no to the second, though I don't doubt I'll run into her sooner or later, if I keep wandering around. Even so, it's not like I can do any of the things that she could..."

Ranma paused, lost in thought for a moment and frowning, then finished with a "... yet."

"Be that as it may..."

Patchouli broke off into a fit of coughing, and in spite of himself Ranma couldn't help but be concerned when it didn't break off immediately, but continued long after he had guessed it would.

"Are you... alright?"

"... my various maladies have their high and low points." Patchy rasped, wiping her mouth on her sleeve in a moment of gracelessness. "This isn't the worst I've been... but I've seen better days. I'll manage."

As though to directly counterprove her words, she wobbled with the next step she took, and would have fallen if Ranma hadn't moved automatically to support her.

"...A... just a moment of vertigo, I'll..."

"You're running a fever." Ranma countered immediately, now close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. Has to be... ugh, if you were human, you'd be dead, or about to die."

"I'm not, however. And just this isn't enough to..."

She stumbled again, and Ranma paused to help steady her.

"Where's that... Koa, was it? Shouldn't she be helping you?"

"She's re-taking inventory of the library... " Patchouli rasped. "... a regular and important task. It wouldn't need... to be repeated so often if certain _rats_ didn't seem to come and go as they pleased... making free with my collection as though they were _invited_..."

She broke into another fit of coughs, seeming to have been incensed into it from her thoughts. At something of a loss for what to do, Ranma just stood there and awkwardly rubbrd at her back as her shoulders heaved.

"... ugh... I needa drink. Brandy, maybe."

"Sounds like a plan, then." Ranma tentatively agreed. "Comfortable chair, something to drink... I guess I could even demonstrate a few little..."

Patchouli went stiff beside him, and shook of his efforts to assist.

"I will _not_... have you _pitying_ me. Confound your abilities to the _hells_ that they may drown in an ocean of _blood_ before I would-"

She erupted in hysterical hacking and wheezing again... this time, deep in thought, Ranma couldn't bring himself to trample on her pride by rushing to aid her immediately. He remained silent for several long, and moments after she finished.

"... You're right." He decided. "It was rude of me to treat you like that. Instead of charity... I think I'll just take advantage of that offer from before. A little favor from me... for a little favor from you, sometime in the future."

"I cannot and will not assist you in making an escape attempt." Patchouli stipulated harshly.

"A _little_ favor, I said." he shot right back. "I wouldn't have asked something like that to begin with, and I'm kind of insulted you don't think I can leave here on my own."

Patchouli snorted at that, but didn't speak up one way or the other on the matter.

"That is... acceptable."

"Fair deal, then." Ranma declared, and scooped Patchouli up in his arms before she realized his intent.

"Eh... what are... do you think you're _doing_-" She stammered.

"Oh, don't kid yourself around, this isn't for _your_ sake." Ranma brusquely replied, ignoring her wriggling attempts to break his grip as though they were nothing. "I just don't feel like stopping every few feet the whole way there. That's all. I could just go ahead on my own, but there's no point to that."

Patchouli grumbled to herself, but settled down and, within a few further paces, she had completely fallen into a deep, heavy slumber. it seemed that the struggle to keep moving against her condition had been more wearying than she had let on, and once she no longer had the inertia and biological momentum that had kept her going...

Ranma sighed softly to himself and continued on.

xxx

A.N.

LATE UPDATE IS ABSURDLY LATE. AND GEEZE WHAT TIME IS IT, AAGH I SHOULD BE SLEEPING, ETC.

So, yeah, sorry. On top of everything else, the Flandre scene was... difficult for me to get right. Well, no, not really 'right' but 'acceptable', I guess. For every paragraph I have up there, I think I wrote then erased around six or seven others that just didn't _work_, as far as the story went. I still can't say I'm perfectly happy with how it ended up, of course, but it's the closest i've come, and even my own patience with my 'wait, no's wears out. in comparison, the Patchy scene came out really fast and easily, pretty much on the first shot, so I guess that's something. Shorter chapter than I'd hoped, too, but nothing to be done there. Good point to break it's a good point, and all.

As for Genma engaging Ranma to Flandre, uh... well, i guess I can't see the idea as coming _completely_ out of left field for me, because I kinda can see that happening, but with him staying way off in Nerima and Flandre staying in the SDM basement, which is staying right where it is for now, i'm not seeing it happening.

"Irritated Reader" i'd like to point out that every time someone bugs me to update something in a review to _another story entirely_, it pushes me one step closer to just deleting that story entirely and pretending like it never existed. I get that you're eager for more, but in all honest i just have nothing for you there right now. I'll get back to that thing when an idea hits me for it.

Comparisons, yes, Ranma is physically a lot stronger than even a bunch of youkai. If he _wanted_ to punch a hole through Patchouli's chest, then yeah, if he can get there before she can get danmaku or spells off, then it's done. Of course, you're making a huge assumption there, being that 'that will slow her down in any way'. he'd have to take off the head immediately, even then there are no guarantees given how ludicrously resilient Zun-youkai are, and more to the point why would he want to do that in the first place? Further, meiling is very fast. On the ground. it could be, at this point, that she's a lot slower in the air, or more unweildy from being extremely out of practice with flight, or simply that the general heroines are just that much faster than even her, in the air, and Aya an order of magnitude or two faster still. You'll just have to wait and see.

next chapter, hm, should take place mostly within Voile, I believe. So, if you like Koakuma, I guess you'll be in for a little treat, when that happens. y'know, whenever that may be.


	16. Chapter 16

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Following my rapid escape from my previous home, I have settled anew. I have made a small place for myself in India, near a suitable nexus of mystical energy, and though it is rather more meager than I would prefer, beggars cannot be choosers. In other respects, things look quite promising. I have made the acquaintance of a charming young lady, Chaaya, who thirsts for a means to prove herself more powerful, better, more wothy to inherit the family fortune and businesses than her wastrel elder brother. It has been some time since I last dealt my hand amongst members of an actual settled criminal organization, but I have found my memory of the previous occasion to serve me well, though there are, of course, various minor differences._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Have made a subscription to the local newspaper, and noted that the first page was devoted to the recent disappearance of a pair of toddlers from their nursery. It continued on to describe and advise various measures of household security, but I found it of little interest aside from that. Two weeks have passed since my arrival, and Chaaya and I have become increasingly more familiar with each other. I have recently made the suggestion that, perhaps, she may enjoy my tutelage and instruction in accurately throwing weapons, and further that she might see towards bringing a single friend along to learn as well. I eagerly await her response._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Chaaya has fully accepted my offer. The friend's name is Aaheli, a significantly plainer girl of less social standing. It seems this choice was made, over potential others, as a means of binding the girl's loyalty with a show of trust. Cunning, if so, but that is only to be expected. I have provided a set of thin gloves for Chaaya, and it was quickly agreed that it would be easier for this secret to be kept should her soft hands not develop calluses too swiftly. Aaheli's own hands are already heavily worn with rough, thicker skin, and so no such offer on her part was required or expected._

_We begin with a weapon so simple and efficient to throw that denizens of drinking establishments near-everywhere I have found have made a sport of it. The dart._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Over the course of several months, the girls have worked their way through darts and a variety of small knives, becoming, if not polished, then at least competent in their use. My own supplies of weaponry are currently small, as I was forced to leave much of it behind, but it is grwing slowly and discretely. Still, the girls are forced to share their tools, at the least for now._

_The papers report a steady stream of disappearing children, as the police forces are apparently incapable of stopping or, indeed, predicting this predator._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Chaaya's frustration and dissatisfaction with her elder brother is steadily growing, and whileI have taken care not to push her too hard in this regard, provocations involving him are the most effective way I have found to motivate the girl. No matter._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Three more disappearances last night, and the police still powerless to do a thing about it._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Was awoken last night by a panicked Chaaya, who had let herself in uninvited. It seems that she has finally lost her temper with her elder brother, and in the heat of the moment she lost her temper and let fly with a blade. She had not fully realized what she had done until he had bonelessly slumped to the ground, and had then fled, in a panic._

_I consoled her, assured her everything would be all right, and that nobody would ever discover she was behind this incident. Indeed, I am proven correct the morning after, as a few discreet phone calls confirm that Aaheli has been privately executed, following her fingerprints being found on the blade used to murder Chaaya's brother._

_She was rather less relieved to hear this news than I had expected, even seemed somewhat distraught. It seems there was more than a little genuine affection there after all. How quaint._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Have displayed technique for the first time to Chaaya, seems to have distracted her from her moping. Made it clear that this is not something that can simply be 'taught', but it can be given to her. She was agreeable, preparations are underway, and a contract is being prepared. It will be finished tonight, while the other preparations will take another two weeks to complete. I've been preparing for months, however, so another fortnight isn't long at all._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_She has signed the contract, in blood. There is now no turning back for her._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Chaaya arrived at an unfortunate time today. She doesn't seem to have placed the foul smell lingering in the air, and I made excuses and assured her the air would clear within an hour. In the mean time, treated her to a meal elsewhere._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Three days._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Chaaya arrived in the middle of certain preparations again. Did not realize until after discussion, but trousers and shoes were spattered with droplets of fluid on one side. I wonder if she noticed? Too late for second thoughts, in any case. It happens tomorrow._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Ritual was successful, though I am feeling somewhat drained. It seems I still hadn't managed to gather and prepare enough sacrifices in advance to avoid dipping at all into my own mystical reserves. I wonder how much of it Chaaya recalls?_

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Too much. Bizarrely, she disapproves. I'm uncertain as to when the charming little murderess decided to grow a conscience, but it sheems that she's anonymously tipped police off regarding me. How very quaint. Still, I suppose I should chide the girl._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_We were interrupted. Even now I can assume that she's spilling the truth to her dear father, or at least enough of it to incriminate me without incriminating herself. Not that he'll need much nudging, given her state, I suppose. time is now limited, however._

_I will reclaim that which is mine, and generous interest, before I leave. The contract entitles me to it, as she has broken the terms by turning against me._

_Journal entry X, date X._

_Following my rapid escape from my previous home, I have settled anew. I have made a small place for myself in the depths of China, near an unusually powerful, but twisted and bound, nexus of mystical energy. Some care will be required to tap into it, and it will be more dangerous than I prefer, but then beggars cannot be choosers. I have made the acquaintance of a brash young lad named Mu Tsu, who is desperate for some way to show his strength and prove himself to his love interest..._

xxx

Fortunately, the path to the library was simply down a hall from the dining room, to a door at the end. An impressively _long_ hall, to be certain, but it was just a straight line, and it wasn't like he was Ryoga, who would still, somehow, manage to get lost even with no twists or turns between his starting point and desired destination.

He wasn't quite sure what to do when he got there, however. Patchouli wasa still asleep, and he wasn't really inclined to wake her... but at the same time, he had, sort of, given his word to perform a small demonstration, so it wasn't like he could just wander off. In the end, he arranged her in a plushy chair, hoped she was comfortable, and draped a blanket over her legs, then simply stood and awkwardly waited.

After a few minutes, he started thinking about hunting Koa down, if only to reduce the boredom somewhat. On the other hand, the library was ridiculously huge, to the point that he probably could get lost for days if he took a wrong turn...

"If you're going to hang about, why not read a book while you wait?" The fairy advised.

Ranma almost declined out of sheer habitual principle, but after a moment he sighed and nodded.

"No telling how long she'll sleep, I guess." He admitted, walking over to a bookshelf.

He eyed the books without any particular interest, waiting for something to jump out and grab his attention. He opened it without hesitation... and a cloud of dust wafted up from the hastily disturbed pages and into his face. In spite of himself, he broke into a fit of short sneezes.

She was quite grumpy by the time they died down, and rubbed irritably at her nose.

"Of all the... I'd almost managed to forget about that. Should probably change back quick..." Ranma grumbled, setting the book down and pulling a prepared thermos from nowhere.

"Is that really neccessary?" The fairy wondered, not able to really disguise a longing glance towards Ranma's cleavage.

"Yeah. It might be important, because once I get away, if they try to track me down then they're not looking for this." He poured the water and reverted almost gratefully to a more masculine shape. "...They'll be looking for this."

The fairy blinked, then nodded, grudging the point. Then blinked again.

"Ah... but didn't the gate guard...?"

"I'm hoping she'll keep quiet about that." he admitted, looking down to the pages as he sat. "Or a least wait until someone asks her directly to volunteer... huh. Looks like Patchouli has spells on her books to keep people from reading them." He finished dully.

"... eheh, no. That's just written in Italian." The fairy countered.

"Same difference, more or less. It's not like I can read it."

"I can, though." The fairy paused, and almost managed to shuffle in place in midair. "I mean... I used to live in Italy for a little while. Used to live in a lot of places for a little while. So I've picked up a whole bunch of languages, and if you want, then..."

Ranma very nearly closed the book right there, so he could go and find something he could actually read on his own. But after a moment, the extra effort he'd have to put into something like that ground the impetus to a halt and he simply sat down.

"Fine. Read to me like a child, then." He grumbled, not really able to conceal his distaste even if he had been inclined to do so.

"Alright. It looks like... a storybook. There should be a lot of things, let's see..."

...

_This is the tale of Simon, the hunter, and the dark castle._

_Having traveled a great disatance, seeking to end the torment of the peasants suffering beneath the cruel yoke of the demon, he entered the gates._

_Almost at once, the ground began to tremble. Pale, rotting arms reached up from the ground, as bodies, wrapped in tattered burial shrouds, heaved themselves free of the earth, and lurched forward..._

_... He heaved the door shut, slamming down the bar, and leaned heavily against the cold stone walls beside it. For a long moment he waited, the scrabbling of the Ghouls against the door slowly fading as they failed to find entry, to sink their rotten teeth into his warm, living flesh. There arose a slow, drawn out moan, and a shuffling. Slowly, Simon's gaze rose, and he realized that it had been foolish of him to think entering the lair of the beast meant safety..._

_... it leapt, screaming, from the water below as he lashed at the bats above. He fought them off, but the water continued to churn beneath him... there was no way to tell how many there were, and the next affirmed his wariness as it leapt at him, eyes burning with hunger..._

_...He muscled the ghoul around, kicking it down the stairs and into the fish-man, sending both tumbling into the waters below, and slammed the door shut, latching it tight. He couldn't imagine that it would hold forever, but by the time it gave way, he would be far gone. He pressed forward, then paused, ears pricking with the sound of great, leathery wings unfurling above him. As he turned, his hand slid down to the handle of the axe..._

"Hmph. This place is... just as dark and unwelcoming as before." an unfamiliar voice echoed.

Storytime came to a sudden, abrupt end, and a number of fairy maids that had been listening in _and when had they shown up anyway, he hadn't even noticed, what had happened to his situational awareness_ gave off tiny little gasps, scattering and either returning to their duties or just outright running away.

"... Who's there?"Ranma called out.

In lieu of an immediate answer, the new person stepped out. Ashrine priestess...? Maybe. The outfit wasn't quite right, like someone had taken the standard uniform and then heavily modified it to suit their own tastes, but still leaving enough that it was pretty clear what she was supposed to be.

"Wonderful shrine maiden of paradise." She answered simply, with only the slightest hint of the Kuno-flavored sense of self-aggrandizement or superiority he might have expected from such a bold declaration. "Hakurei Reimu. And yourself?"

"... A guest of the household. Saotome Ranma." He replied with a curt nod."

"Ah? Does the mansion take guests now?"

"After a fashion."

"Hm... then you aren't a guest."

"No, I am. An honored guest of the lady of the house. Kept with soft bed-linens and delivered food of the highest quality, to a guestroom made up of the purest golden bars. I'm a songbird, you see, who's music caught the lady's interest."

"... A prisoner."

"If you have to put it that way, then yes." Ranma dryly confirmed.

"... Eh. That's none of my business." Reimu decided abruptly. "I'm not here to rescue idiots today."

"... Is that so?" Ranma answered, not sure how he wanted to take that.

"There's no point. If you were dumb enough to get caught by the vampires, then something's going to eat you sooner or later." She stated pragmatically. "And I don't recognize your surname... so you're from the outside, and nobody's going to come complaining to me about how you got yourself eaten. So it's not my problem."

"Oh...? I'm a little insulted. That you assumed I was for help from you so easily." Ranma said, his mood slowly souring with the conversation.

"If you weren't, then you're even stupider than I thought. But like I said, it's not my business, given that you're an outsider who hasn't donated to my shrine. You aren't my responsibility."

For a brief, very brief moment, Ranma imagined that he could see Nabiki's outline floating over Reimu's form. Ah. So that was what this was about... but he suddenly didn't feel particularly inclined to shell out.

"... So, then, why are you here?"

"...Oh. I came to do some investigating. 'Is she the one making this weird mist?', or something along those lines. I need to speak with Patchouli."

"Ah? I'm afraid miss Patchouli is very sick today. She's currently resting, and you shouldn't rouse her. Maybe you should come back another day? Yes, come back some other time. That would be much better."

"... Suspicious. If you don't want me to talk to Patchouli... then that's probably exactly what I should be doing."

"What. No, seriously, she's sick. Don't bother her."

"Try to stop me."

... Well, that was that, wasn't it? It wasn't like he could back down, having had it put out so boldly...

"There's lots of magic on the books. Looks like protection spells. They should be fine, no matter what." The fairy whispered, before taking flight, wanting to be as far as possible when the gauntlet got thrown.

"Fine then. You'll have to go through me." He declared seriously.

...

Reimu went through him. Painfully. He'd managed to delay her a few minutes with the fact that his overcoat and beating stick still gave off the impression of 'wizard apprentice' more than 'Face-punching martial artist that can take his lumps and hand some right back', and even managed to hold the upper hand for a little. Her fault, really, for rushing directly into close combat with him. Not that she was _bad_ at close combat, nothing of the sort... it was just that that was where he excelled.

Of course, once she figured that out, and managed to disengage, she was frustrated with the whole thing. Which probably played no small part in the veritable hailstorm of yin-yang bullets, razor-edged sealing wards, and pointy acupuncture needles that followed.

Oh, Ranma had done his best to counteratack, even at a distance, but her fury 'at being tricked' had proven quite simply overwhelming. he'd quickly been forced to give up most of his offense in favor of defense, and even that hadn't lasted long. In a last ditch effort, he'd tried the tactic he'd used against Alice, speeding up the side of a bookcase to attack from above and behind... except, at the last minute, just for a moment, Reimu had _flickered_, if that was the word for it, had just for a second gone completely immaterial and intangible, allowing both his attack and himself to pass through her as though there was nothing but empty air.

And then she was back, and _she_ was behind _him_, his tactic having not only failed but completely exploded in his face as the barrage of pointy metal hit home against him, driving him into the floor. And kept coming, and coming, until he felt he resembled nothing so much as a battered, bleeding pincussion, sprawled out on the floor.

Finally, she landed, and walked past him while he couldn't so much as muster up the inclination to swipe feebly at her ankles.

"Hey. You. Wake up."

When Patchouli didn't reply, Reimu took hold of her shoulder and began shaking, irritated.

"I. Said. Wake. Up. You can sleep later, I want to talk to you right now."

Patchouli groaned to herself as she stirred, eyes unfocused and rolling around the room until they finally landed on Ranma. Then they turned to Reimu. And then, without warning or fanfare, likely in direct response to the sudden uncontrolled motion, she loudly expelled everything she had eaten for breakfast. Reimu barely managed to step out of the way as it arced through the air to splatter against the carpet, and she frowned in disgust as Patchouli began moaning again, almost collapsing over the side of the chair before she got a firm grip on the side table.

"Ugh... that moron wasn't lying, then. You really are sick. Whatever, I don't have time for this. I have to head back up to the shrine soon, and get ready before that stupid party gets going again. I might be able to question someone else..."

Without hesitation, she left, not glancing back or so much as pausing to offer assistance in cleaning up the mess she'd made. Ranma panted slowly, studiously ignoring the protests of muscles working against the thin needles sticking out of them as he worked his hand until he had enough leverage to try to slowly, slowly lift himself up from the floor... and fail, as muscles spasmed and arms gave out, sending him collapsing face-first back into the carpet.

"..Koa.." Patchouli rasped, and suddenly she was there. She took a moment to observe the scene, then without hesitation stepped over Ranma, leaving him where he lay as she began tending to her mistress.

Well, that was fine too. He'd had just about enough time to catch his breath, and though his body wasn't going to accept his demands of it normally..

He groaned, as his body seemed to erupt in the blue fires of his Ki, soothing and deadening the pain, then dimming down to an occasional flicker, counteracting the pain of the needles as he wrenched himself slowly to his knees, then his feet.

"Oh. You're alive." Koa stated, seeming uncertain as to whether she was pleased withi that turn of events.

"Needle can only make thin puncture wounds... it's very dificult to kill someone with them, no matter how many you used." he rasped. "Blunt trauma from those balls and cuts from the talismans are a bigger issue, survival wise. Of course, the pains a different story... but that's what Ki is for."

Ranma started to shrug, winced, and instead began to pull needles out of himself, dropping them to clink down to the ground one at a time. There were some, in his back, that he couldn't reach on his own, but that was fine. They did little enough to impair mobility, and it would take too long to hunt someone down to pry them out for him. They would probably try to be gentle about it, rather than just wrenchingf them loose, and each one would take longer than a dozen if he pulled them out himself...

"If you'll excuse me for a moment..." he said, nodding to Patchouli as he walked towards the door. "I have a... conversation to finish with miss Hakurei. I'll be right back."

"Eh..? You seriously.." Koa began, before he stepped through the door, fairy only just making it through before it slammed shut.

He paused for a moment, outside the door, thinking. Where... of course. She didn't have much time, or so she claimed, and the nearest place someone else would be was... the dining room. Remilia apparently made a production of her meals, eating very slowly, and she would only just now be winding down to the finish...

He broke into a loping run, picking up speed until he was almost blurring, ki fueling every motion of his legs. There, ahead... the doors to the dining room were hanging open, just as he'd thought. He leaned down and forced Ki into his hand, dragging it against the ground as he pulled against himself, sliding into a turn that lost the least amount of momentum possible... There. Remilia blinked as she saw him, though Reimu didn't notice at all, given he was directly behind her, and she all but teleports out of her chair, seeming to instinctively know what's about to happen.

"Round two!" Ranma bellowed.

"What the f-" Was all the shrine maiden managed to get out before he was upon her, one hand burning with blue fire. With that hand, he clamped hold of the back of her neck, and, still running, slammed her face-down into the table. Dishes and silverware and foodstuff flew in every direction as he continued forward, full speed, smashing Reimu headfirst through it all, a blast ahead of himself knocking away chairs to keep them from getting in his way.

He smashed her through Remilia's throne, at the head of the table, and continued on, heedless of the splinters flying through the air, to slam her full into the wall at the far end of the dining room.

He didn't let up after, kicking her up into the air and channeling that momentum into strike after strike, each blow lifting her higher and higher until they reached the apex of his leap. Then he caught hold of her and rolled in midair as they started to fall, kicking her down and launching blast after blast of glowing energy after her, each slamming her just a little deeper into the floor even as they slowed his own fall just slightly...

He landed feet-first in her already battered solar plexus, garnering a strangled sort of 'hgerk' sound and widened eyes before jumping away. He waited for her to get up... she didn't. Testing the water, he hurled a small blast to impact close to her. She didn't so much as twitch away from it. Huh.

"... K.O.? Feh." He grumbled, starting to turn. "Maybe next time, when someone gives you friendly advice, you'll _listen_ instead of charging ahead like an angry bull. Or at least stick around to help clean up your-"

_"Yin-Yang King."_

It alammed into him with what seemed to be all the weight of a freight train behind it, and he didn't have enough time to prepare himself for the follow-up that he knew was coming. Crap.

_"Flying Mysterious Shrine Maiden"_

... and then came the pain.

Somehow, at the end of it, he was still just barely holding on to consciousness as she tapped slowly towards him, and he could hear Remilia's delighted laughter backdropping it all.

"And that was round three. My game, it seems. Goodnight."

She stomped at his kidneys, and everything faded to black.

xxx

A.N.

Hey, y'know when I said this would be Koa-focus chapter?

I LIED.

I AM A LIAR.

In all seriousness, though, that _was_ my intention, but partway through Reimu went 'You know what? Fuck all this, there neds to be more _me_ involved', and she sort of hijacked the chapter for her own purposes. Eh, well, works out pretty well anyway, I guess, it's been a while since there was a fight scene and all.

I'm not sure why the whole fairy-distance thing got brought up in reviews, but nowe's a good point to point out that, unless i've made a SERIOUS error somewhere that I didn't catch, the fairy hasn't left Ranma's near vicinity. When Sakuya moved them back to the bedroom, she was hiding in his coat, etc. Unlike Cirno, the other fairy is never particularly far away.

What Reimu is doing with her time? Not much. She's more reactive than proactive, unless it affects her directly or someone comes to bug her about it, she won't do anything about things. Gensokyo is pretty darwinian, yeah. Of course, it would be a lot different if Ranma was a native, because Reimu would have more or less felt obligated to bust him out, but that's that.

In any case, this chapter should also show some variations of situation, and how it affects fights. Straight up even match: Reimu won without _too_ much effort. Sort-of sneak-attack, where he hit first, hit hard, and never stopped hitting, he won. Of course, the follow-up, where Reimu meant serious business, he got lolstomped, but that's just how it goes.

Also, Remilia has valid, logical, albeit distasteful, reasons for her treatment of little Flandre, but that's probably going to take a looong time to put into words and type out, but I'm just saying this to make it clear that it doesn't _just_ boil down to 'lolvampires'. ...That plays a part too, but it's not _just_ that. Well, people probably won't be particularly interested in the details anyway, so whatever.

In any case, _next_ chapter will be Koa-focus. Should be. probably. Well, we'll see, anyway.


	17. Chapter 17

Away to Neverland

xxx

_It's been a while since I last saw him. After a week or so of cooling down, I started to think about things... and it does seem like it's getting less and less likely that he 'allowed' anything, like I had initially thought. If so, the jerk would almost definitely have gotten bored of playing around and sauntered back already, in full smug superiority._

_So, that oni girl, she definitely has to be strong enough that even his usual cheating tricks aren't enough to pull out a win. Not sure how I feel about that. Sure, on some level, it's gratifying to know that, wherever he is, he's becoming familiar with losing and failing. On the other hand, it burns at me that I'm not the one turning him into a loser and a failure._

_Well, in either case, much as I hate to say it, there's times when it helps to have a disgusting, cheating wretch like him around. Taro attacked the other day... seems he'd heard the old lech had bought it, and was in denial. Kidnapped Akane to try to draw him out. Or something, I don't really know what goes on in his head. With Ranma, the old lech, and none of the amazons available, though, it was just down to me, Tendo, and Ranma's worthless father to rescue her. Kuno doesn't count._

_Taro wiped the floor with us, every time we tried. The best plan we had was to keep him away from cold water, and by extension, keep ME away from cold water, though that was a more private addition to the plans. Things didn't really work out that way. Taro cheats every bit as badly as Ranma ever did, and he's never without at least a couple flasks of water. His monster form hits like a bus, and I should know. I'm really the only one who could actually take a single punch and keep going. Much more than that was difficult, though. On the plus side, I've gotten a bit better at dodging these days._

_Eventually, Akane convinced him that they didn't really need to hole up in a shack on the top of a cliff by the sea, that Happosai could show up, if he was going to, just as easily , if not more so,at the Tendo house. He's moved in, more or less, and doesn't seem at all interested in leaving, although we still end up trying to drive him out every so often._

_More humiliatingly, a magic prince from wherever he came from showed up to kidnap Akane. Naturally, I attempted to defend her, but he was unexpectedly powerful and got the better of me. It was actually Taro who'd driven him off, in the end, as he turned out to be quite insistent that since he'd already kidnapped her, and she hadn't actually been rescued, it was still 'his turn', and the newcomer could shove off._

_At least when Ranma was around, I could just throw him at problems like this, and know that even if he didn't deal with things on his own, somehow, he would soften them up enough for someone else to finish them up. Ugh. I almost miss the bastard, when put that way. I think I want to puke._

_The fact of the matter remains, though... I'm too weak, as I am. It's time for me to go on a training trip._

_-Ryoga Hibiki_

xxx

"... then I got my second wind."

"Hope you didn't damage... promised demonstrations for me. Already wasn't in the best of condition."

"... told you, _no freezing_!"

"Sounds unusually verbose, from what I've... -rrect. I suppose the Library has taken a liking to..."

Words swam in and out of audibility as Ranma slowly clawed his way to consciousness, and sat up.

"I suggest you not do that." Patchouli advised, as his vision whirled for a moment. "You've been beaten, suffered internal damage, been impaled, had an arm wrenched almost out of place, and now you've been thoroughly beaten again, and are suffering from a number of superficial puncture wounds, not individually dangerous, but they do add up."

"Tch. I'll be fine. If I was going to die from just this, I'd have died long ago." Ranma affirmed, swinging his legs around and slowly rising from the bed. Then pausing. "Why am I naked?"

"That would be Koakuma." Patchouli replied. "On being directed to tend to you, she elected to cut off the majority of your clothes and burn them. Your coat is untouched, though it will require some mending and laundering."

"Aw, geeze..." Ranma groaned, chains from his manacles clinking slightly as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I liked those clothes, too. Whatever, I'm sure I've got something... Just a second..."

"Well, if the idiot's not going to die and smear my reputation, I'll head off." Reimu said cooly, before turning and heading out. "Stupid... _party_ to get ready for. There's never so many parties, especially after long winters like this... and I'm stuck dealing with making them happen and cleaning up after, ugh."

Ranma put two and two together, and almost felt guilty for what Suika was putting the shrine maiden through. But not quite. Instead of apologizing, and getting drawn into a long, too-revealing discussion about _why_ he was apologizing, he simply tugged the sheets off of the bed and wrapped them aroound into a makeshift toga... and then, as Patchouli's eyebrows started rising, he started pulling a set of replacement clothes out of it.

"Hidden Weapons." he explained, before taking the sheets off and getting properly dressed. "I really use it mostly for the utility of carrying things around without having to carry them around."

"Fascinating... and useful. I assume that the drawback, then, is you can only reach the non-space provided there is some sort of barrier concealing it from sight, possibly limited entirely to some form of clothing?"

"Uh..." Ranma had to pause to think about that, one foot in his pants. "... Huh. Now that you mention it, that's the only way I've ever seen it done, and the only way I've tried to do it... but I wasn't exactly punching into my sleeves to make it work the first time, either. I'll have to play around and see... uh, now's probably not a good time, though."

"I gather, then, that you've not had any actual instruction on how this technique works?" Patchouli rasped, waving for Koa to fetch some tea.

"Nah, nah. People just get all... uptight, you know, about teaching their ancient and secret and sacred techniques to people they don't like." Ranma replied flippantly. "Not much happier about me stealing them, I guess, but if you actually use a martial arts technique you almost have to expect the other side to be playing close attention, do what they can to steal it and work out counters."

"Indeed... spell-capture is both an intriguing and annoying aspect of the danmaku system, here, and similar tendencies prevail in purer and older magical duels... although, those generally are to the death." Patchouli mused.

"You get what I'm saying, then? Anyway, I'm not sure there's much else I can actually demonstrate properly at the moment. I can make a battle aura, though that's usually more for flashy effect and intimidation, these days, there's not much actual benefit from it." Ranma mused aloud. "Theres also the soul of ice, it's actually a part of a second technique, the tornadoes you've already seen... I've been thinking about poking about with it to make an elemental attack, off and on, for a while now, but it keeps slipping my mind." he admitted. "Then there's... huh. Now that I think about it, I don't really do much with direct ki, mostly just internal body stuff. Force multiplier, increase speed and power, heal faster than normal people. Well, theres also an emotion-based blast of energy..."

"I feel it only right to warn you, if you say it's powered by 'Love', I'll have to kill you right here. I get enough of that from Marisa." Patchouli interjected.

"What? No. Huh, I don't even know what that would end up doing, to be honest. No, I use Confidence. It's a lighter emotion, so it doesn't pack as much of a punch behind it as, say, depression or anger, but it's not as taxing either. Tradeoffs, y'know. But anyway... yeah, most of it is stuff that really needs a target to be used on. I guess I can keep with-"

"Where the _HELL_ am I this time?" Came a familiar roar from the grounds, as Ranma went quietly still.

"Bullshit." He said, after a long moment. "Things just don't work out that conveniently for me. There's no way-"

"I don't know _how_ but this is your fault Ranma! Everything is _always_ your fault!"

"-No, no that's definitely Ryoga. Man, I know he can get lost, but this is just taking the cake." Ranma finished, words colored with a sense of dumbstruck awe. He shook his head for a moment, then started opening the window. "Better head down there and deal with him, then. You might want to watch, or take notes, or something."

"You can fly with ki, then?"

"Nah, not at all." Ranma replied, stepping up through the frame. "I can fall just fine, though. See you there!"

"Are you-"

Ranma was pretty sure that the last word would have been 'mad' or 'nuts' or some variation of that, except he couldn't be sure because by that time he was already well down the side of the building, one fairy sceaming in his ear and another, larger one, watching with delight from where she'd floated out the window after him. Yeah, maybe he hadn't exactly thought this through... Oh, wait, right, umbrella. He'd actually seen Ryoga do this before, and it was just the work of a moment to tug it out, open it up, and then slam right into the ground any way, speed only partially reduced, because he'd already been most of the way down by then.

Definitely could have thought that out better.

"... Ranma?" Ryoga's confused voice came. "Did... you just jump out of a window?"

"... Yes. Yes I did." Ranma answered, taking a moment to catch his breath while Ryoga was still dumbfounded before he hopped to his feet. "So! How've you been doing?"

"You just jumped out of a window, and slammed right into the ground in front of me. So my day is going downhill pretty fast. Also, you're bleeding."

"Ah? Oh, damn, that thing. Geeze, it just keeps opening up." Ranma grumbled, glancing down to his torso and impalement wound before looking back up. "Well, whatever. Politeness out of the way, we can fight now."

"Ranma, you... you just aren't even bothering with the whole subtle thing. Wow."

"Yeah, I'll admit it, I'm really excited about there _finally_ being someone around who's ass I can actually kick." Ranma cheerily replied.

"And even with no subtlety at all, I'm more and more interesred in grinding your face in the dirt, injured or not." Ryoga mused. "Hm... come to think of things, where's your captor? Is this her place?"

"No, not hardly. She's out and about though. here and there."

Ryoga seemed to be considering this far too deeply for Ranma's preferences, so he lifted his wrists, clinked the manacles there together a couple times, shrugged, and finished with a casual 'Magic' that left the situation entirely up to interpretation. Ryoga's confusion cleared right up.

"Oh. I _was_ wondering why you hadn't come back to bother anyone if you weren't under constant watch." Ryoga admitted. "Either way, I guess it's time for me to punch you in the face now. I'd add a reason, but really, punching you in the face is a reason in and of itself these days."

"Nice!" Ranma shot back, even as he blurred into motion.

Ryoga was in full fighting fitness. Ranma was very far from being in anything that could be considered 'good condition'. And so, Ryoga could be forgiven for being surprised when he was immediately put on a full defensive, as Ranma crashed through his guard and inside his attacks far too swiftly for comfort, driving his fists systematically into his torso, landing too many blows for Ryoga to count in a matter of moments, before knocking him away with a kick he'd put his entire body into, launching him through the air to crash into the ground like a rag doll.

"... What, is that it?" Ranma asked, disappointed. "Man. Did I just get awesome while I've been gone... or is it that you've gotten lame, porkchop?"

Ryoga erupted in green fire, punching and cratering the ground as he rose.

"Ha! That's better! Come on, let's get this started already, hit me!"

"With _pleasure_!" Ryoga roared, darting forward and swinging one fist around to impact with Ranma's cheek...

His head moved a little. That was all the reaction there was, as Ryoga stood there, stunned once more.

"... Heh..." Ranma started to chuckle, and Ryoga could almost taste the smugness.

"No." He denied.

"Heheheh... your punch... It was..."

"No, no no no no no!"

"JUST LIKE A BABY'S KICK!" Ranma finished, at full volume.

With a howl of abject misery, Ryoga deliberately drove his fist into Ranma's wound. Ranma replied quite reasonably to this by vomiting blood all over Ryoga's face, to which he howled, and started rubbing frantically at his eyes.

"Yeah, okay, might have gone a bit far there, throwing that right back in your face after so long." Ranma admitted, slightly subdued from the throbbing agony his torso had just been transformed into.

"I'll _kill_ you!" Ryoga roared, beyond reason by now, even as he was still rubbing at one of his eyes.

Ranma decided it would probably be a good idea to press the atttack again, burning his battle aura to try to help fix whatever Ryoga had just mangled in his guts, and Ryoga was forced on the retreat, just barely keeping from getting pummeled, one slip up meaning... huh, now that he thought about it, it was getting a little cool, and wasn't something weirdly familiar about-_oh shit._

"You aren't the only one that can steal moves, Ranma!" Ryoga yelled, throwing one fist into the air and calling up a tornado, which ripped him into the air almost immediately... Ranma let himself fly up, after a moment's hesitation.

"But using _my_ moves against me?" He called back down, visibly gathering ki for an oversized blast, then tapping the soul of ice and using it to tweak the technique, just to see what would happen, because he probably wasn't going to get a better chance to test the idea out than right now. "Not such a great idea, porkchop! Dodge this, now!"

Ryoga looked absolutely horrified as the orb crashed down on him, walls of wind not fading fast enough to let him get through them before the impact came... Ranma flicked the umbrella back out as he reached the highest point of his arc, using it to slowly float down as he surveyed the results. It was better than he'd expected. From a wide, circular radius out from Ryoga, everything was coated with a nice, even covering of two, maybe three inches of ice.

Naturally, it was only a couple moments further before the ice coating Ryoga started to crack, and he smashed his way out, roaring. In almost the same breath, he pulled a good dozen bandanas loose, prompting Ranma to wonder just how the hell wore so many at the same time, and let fly. At this point, Ranma realized his predicament. The fastest way to dodge the incoming wave of razor-sharp fabric would obviously be to just let go of the umbrella and fall faster, but he wasn't willing to just sacrifice it. Instead, he closed it, and managed to twist around the few that got too close for comfort before his increased speed dropped him out of reach of the rest.

Ryoga was waiting for him, having jumped up into the air, and was already swinging his belt like a sword. Of _course_. Ranma dodged, and kicked away from him, but the umbrella got cleaved in half.

"Guh... _dammit_ Ryoga, that was a gift! I liked that umbrella!"

"Stop _whining_!" he countered eloquently, falling through the air at him, already staring to...

His mind froze as he saw Ranma's open palm, glowing with traced spirals of red and blue ki.

"Bullshit."

"I've had _enough_." Ranma snapped, shoving forward with that palm as he unleashed the compressed tornado he'd used before, against Meiling. Unlike the previous time, though, Ryoga wasn't as durable as Meiling was... but on the other hand, he also didn't have a wall behind him to hold him in place and amplify the full, drilling impact, either. By the time Ranma dropped the technique, he was barely a speck in the sky, and still going. Eh. Well, he'd live, Ranma reasoned. Ryoga was tough that way.

At some point, Patchouli had made her way to the grounds, and had begun to rapidly take notes on what she'd seen, although without much particular interest in much of it. It seemed her interest was still mostly only in the hidden weapons technique. Ranma opened his mouth, starting to ask if she'd gotten enough from that, when he was interrupted by a heavy creaking noise. He turned awkwardly.

... Huh. It looked like Ryoga's barrage of bandanas had taken a heavy toll on one of the towers. Another loud crack was heard, and a few chunks of masonry started to fall as fairy maids swarmed out of the tower to float around it and watch as it began to tilt dangerously. Towards him. A few quick moments of thought confirmed it, yes, thatchunk of building was going to land _right_ smack where he was standing right now. Swell.

"Hey, Patchouli." he called. "You might want to get back a ways... but watch this one real close."

Ranma stared up in the air, ignoring whatever Patchouli had to say as he crossed his arms confidently over his chest, waiting as the segment of building slowly toppled over and broke free of its housing. As it started to fall, he finally moved his hands, extending a single finger and watching closely. Then, just as Patchouli started to worry that he might not know what he was doing, as the tower was about to slam down upon him, he stretched out almost lazily and tapped the falling masonry.

"Break." he demanded simply.

Patchouli nearly dropped her notebook as the stone and mortar did just that, leaving a space more than wide enough for him to pass through as the tower finished falling. After a moment, another side of the tower exploded outwards, and Ranma sauntered casually through the opening, hands in his pockets.

"So... That do you for a demonstration?" He asked, and Patchouli could only nod in response. "Cool. I'm gonna take a nap now."

Suiting words to action, he took a single step further forward, and immediately fell flat on his face.

xxx

A.N.

Still no koa focus. Sorry. :(

Been focused on other stuff recently, studies, job-hunting, etc. While I've found the time to write, it's been for another thing, a choose your own adventure sort of endeavor, which has recently somehow mutated into a giant psuedo war game thing. Well, chapter turned out alright, anyway. Bit short, but what can you do, you know?

Anyway, more when it comes, and all.


	18. Chapter 18

Away to Neverland

xxx

_Dear Diary_

_The Beast still holds sway over my Beloved One. _

_Though I continually quest for her favor, driven by her fair, pale skin, her ruby red lips, her shimmering, dark hair, the Beast is swift to turn me aside, bringing my Beloved One back into the misery of her servitude._

_But I will not submit, and I will not forever be turned aside. As the crashing tide, which eats away at the cliff little by little, tumbling stone into the murky depths, so shall I wear away the chains binding you to The Beast._

_My dearest Beloved, Konatsu. I come for you._

_-Peridot Charming_

xxx

Ranma woke peacefully, and spent a moment reflecting on the fact that, _really_, he was just passing out far too much.

Then a cough from the side interrupted his thoughts. Turning, he noted that Patchouli was much more composed, now.

"That last... ability?" She asked, pointedly.

"Technique." Ranma grunted in response, shifting as he rose from the bed, stretching his neck. "I think it was invented for mining, really. Most of what it gets used for is to blow holes through things that get in the way, right?"

"In short, then... this is one more ability that just anyone can learn to perform?" Patchouli asked, delicately.

Ranma actually paused in thought for a moment, not certain of the sidden level of interest, then shrugged.

"Assuming you're skilled enough." He said. "And you can survive bein' beaten on by rocks bigger than you are for a couple weeks straight, yeah."

"I see. I believe that will be all, then." Patchouli said, rising from her own seat, notes complete. "... I'll leave you your privacy, then. I believe Remilia will be paying her own visit, later. If the combined efforts of fatigue and blood loss have not ended you, perhaps we will speak again in the morning?"

"Haah? Maybe. No promises, mind." Ranma grunted.

A long few moments of silence passed, as Patchouli left, and Ranma stared out at the horizon, sun slowly lowering. Then he turned, mind made up.

"Hey... you, ice fairy." He called, catching Cirno's attention. "Nobody cares if you come and go, right?"

"Eh... I dunno. I don't think they'll let me back in if I leave, though. Stingy." She grumbled.

"Yeah, fine. But now's as good a time as any, right? Just, when you go... I need you to do me a favor. Take this with you, all right?"

"Huh? Why-"

"I can't tell you, right now. You'll just have to trust that I have a reason, all right? Take this, and go, okay."

"Geeze... fine." Cirno said, floating out of the window.

Ranma leaned back into the wall and sighed.

No helping it. The only way he could think of, would be _that_.

xxx

The sun had long since set.

It was time for the nocturnal hunters to seek their prey.

And so, Remilia's hand stretched out to the door...

And paused.

Was that... the sound of a motor?

The vampire had barely enough time to throw herself out of the way as the door erupted in splinters, and a howling, dark-haired young man on a motorcycle passed in a blur of full speed.

The noise Remilia let loose, as it tore down the hall, savaging the carpet beneath its tires, was half enraged snarl and half childish laughter of interest.

Was that the game?

The fox was on the loose. Like any good bloodhound, it was time to give chase.

She tore through the halls after her quarry, as carpeting changed to tiles, to wood, and to stone, changing from one place to another as the run dragged on.

Its top speed was higher, but he could barely handle the corners of the sometimes very twisty passages and hallways. By contrast, though she wasn't as swift in a straight run, it was no trouble to keep on his tail, stench of the scared prey filling the air...

... That wasn't quite right?

The cycle turned through a kitchen, alarming a number of maids that had been getting into the sweets as it roared through. Remilia noted, mind distracted, that punishments would be in order for them.

Later, of course. It could only be later, as the cycle had turned, taking up the stairs at a speed...

It couldn't be. Was he really? ... He _was_~

The glass of the window above the highest point of the stair shattered, as the cycle passed through, Remilia not far behind, and dropped down to a large rooftop pavilion below...

Where the front and rear tire both burst at once, sending the machine skidding across the floor through broken glass.

The game was up.

Remilia could only smile toothily, as she approached, the scent of her prey's blood wafting freely on the air...

...

... the smile faded as the man scrabbled backwards, away from her, drawing a pistol and leveling it her way with shaking hands.

"... What is this? Who are you, then?" She wondered aloud, curiously.

"What are _you_... monster... _demon_!" He rasped, continuing to retreat at her approach.

"Devil." Remilia corrected, dryly. The smile returned. "Isn't this an interesting trick, though? Bait the hound away with a scrap of meat, while the fox runs free? I wonder... I hope that isn't _all_ he has to offer."

"Stay b-back!" The man ordered, tip of his pistol wobbling.

Remilia's grin widened, but she did not halt her advance. And there was only so much room, even in a large space such as this. Eventually, there was nowhere left to backpedal to, just a short banister, and a long drop.

He fired, and a neat little hole appeared, blossoming red in Remilia's chest.

Her advance did not halt.

"It's lucky... I am a light eater." She said, freely. "Those who I feed upon... they only very seldom die from it. But, it's unfortunate for you... my dear sister must eat as well, yes?"

The pistol fired once more. And again, and again still, until only sharp clicks rang out as a desperate cry in the face of inevitability.

A scream rang out through the night, sharp and shrill.

Elsewhere, making a break for the wall, presence concealed beneath not just the Umi-Sen-Ken, but every ninja trick he had ever stolen, Ranma shuddered.

It wasn't like this was his fault, right?

If he'd just left the guy in stuff-space, then sooner or later, that Yukari was probably going to eat him.

And it wasn't like he could set him free outside, without getting outside himself.

It was really the best offer he could give. Let the guy have a fighting chance at escape, even if there wasn't really anything in the way of explanation.

Maybe the deck was stacked against him a bit.

That was just how life went, Ranma reflected, leaping over the wall, stolen and utilized silk bedsheet fluttering slightly in the wind.

The palm-strike, when it came, was like a sharp shock of reality, slamming him back to the cruel earth as blood poured freely from the corner of his mouth.

"... Sorry about this." Meiling said aloud, standing on the wall and looking down at him, heaving himself up from the ground on the _inside_ of the wall. "But as Gatekeeper, just as I'm supposed to keep people from coming in whenever they want, I have to do what I can to keep the lady's guests from leaving before she's ready."

"... Feh." Ranma grunted, spitting a mouthful of blood aside, as the fairy hissed in his ear. "That what you call a gate-guard? It's more like a prison warden."

"You could call it that, I guess." she admitted with a shrug. "One way or another, though... you aren't getting out of here so easily, I'm afraid."

"Had to try, right?"

"I suppose you felt so." She allowed, cracking her knuckles. "So... do you intend to keep trying?"

... He couldn't. Right now, she was probably the only one who knew where he was. But any minute now, that maid could search the grounds. If a fight began in earnest, she wouldn't even need to, but... he couldn't fight. Time was against him.

He smiled.

"You know, there's something that... well, it's not really a saying. But I don't doubt that any member of Anything Goes would agree with me on it. 'If at first, you don't succeed... _cheat_'."

Meiling tensed, but Ranma was already swirling the sheets up, around himself, and over...

And without hesitation, or a moments thought about the attempt, he and the fairy disappeared.

The sheet drifted slowly down to the ground, and Meiling stared at it for a few long moments. It wasn't long before Sakuya appeared, a long knife in hand, glimmering in the moonlight.

"Milady's guest is no longer present in the house or grounds." She noted, darkly.

"Looks like." Meiling admitted.

"He got _away_ from you."

Meiling shrugged.

"I didn't think he would be stupid enough to try what he did." She admitted, again.

"... Do you believe that absolves you of guilt?"

Meiling's smile went toothy.

"Guilt? Ah, adorable little Head Maid. Are you going to punish me, I wonder?"

There was a quiet sound, of blades leaving their sheathes, and battle was joined.

xxx

A.N.

Who wants an extra-short chapter, eh?

And I said there would be a Koa focus chapter.

I am a liar.


End file.
